Double Trouble: 1994
by Loki Mischeif-Maker
Summary: AU. Between odd happenings at Hogwarts and odd happenings in the rest of the wizarding world, Regulus and Sirius Black have more than enough to worry about. As Sirius frets about Harry's future, however, Regulus's mind turns uneasily to his own past.
1. The Return of the Mark

**Disclaimer:** I do not own any Harry Potter characters, settings, or plot devices; I just fangirl both Black brothers something awful.

**Author's Note:** Good grief; am I really starting this? For those of you who don't know, this is the second in the Double Trouble series; 1993 has already been written and posted, and it details what happened after Sirius's escape from Azkaban and what, exactly, Regulus is doing here. For those of you who do, welcome back; I hope this instalment can live up to the last (although I appreciate this chapter is rougher than I wanted it to be. Frankly I'm surprised I got it up this week.) Cheers! — Loki

* * *

Regulus Black had long since decided that Tuesday was undoubtably the most useless day of the week. After all, Monday existed because the weekend had to end _sometime_, Wednesday was the middle of the week, and Thursday and Friday were at least on the downhill trend. Tuesday, on the other hand, just sat there, a mere stepping stone to Hump Day.

He was dimly aware that this evaluation had been aided in school by his class schedule, which always seemed to hold History of Magic with Gryffindors— the most useless class he could think of— on Tuesday mornings, and Astronomy on Tuesday nights, when he didn't see the point in taking a class to learn the names of the stars when he'd been christened after one.

On this particular Tuesday, Regulus had spent most of his working hours being shouted at from the other end of a phone line, and at the grocer's on the way home, the clerk and customer in front of him had expanded his broken French vocabulary in colorful and interesting ways. Still, while the new words would come in handy if Sirius ever got bored enough to experiment with the power cables, they weren't the sort of thing he'd use in public. Neither of these things really had anything to do with the day of the week, and if Regulus had been in a better mood he would have admitted it. But right now it was easier to think that Tuesdays were cursed.

And when he'd finally gotten home, Sirius was nowhere to be found.

Regulus had been looking forward to ranting at someone who would just laugh and tell him not to take things so seriously. Sirius's philosophy seemed to be that all the little things in life— from undone homework to missing keys— would work themselves out eventually, and when he was in a comparatively good mood the attitude seemed contagious.

"Sirius?" he called on his way through the door.

No answer.

Regulus shrugged, stuffed his keys into his coat pocket— he wasn't going to add missing keys to the list of minor annoyances that summed up his day— and made his way into the kitchen. Since he'd yet to see hide or hair of his brother, he tried again. "Sirius!"

When there was still no answer, he whistled in case he was a dog and in an ornery mood. Sirius the dog always came to a whistle; it seemed to be built into his shape.

The patter of paws entirely failed to reach Regulus's ears, and Regulus shrugged, put the groceries away, and got dinner out for the hippogriff. Sirius still hadn't shown his face, and Regulus supposed he must have gone out again.

In itself, this wasn't unusual. After twelve years in Azkaban, Sirius was not going to allow himself to be cooped up at home. As he'd pointed out, the people who knew he was an Animagus numbered seven: Regulus, Albus Dumbledore, Sirius's old friend Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew— who was a _long_ way off had he any survival instincts— and three kids, so it wasn't as if the dog couldn't wander around the village without comment by any local wizards.

There were, after all, a few of them: Since Regulus was too nervous after their brush with the Ministry at the end of the last school year to get the _Daily Prophet_ delivered, Sirius had gone looking for trash bins he could nick them out of. The one he'd found belonged to a vacationing English family with three pre-Hogwarts girls, all of whom had caught Sirius at the bin and decided he was the most wonderful thing on four legs.

Sirius was probably over there now, basking in their attention and looking forward to the comedy of errors that would inevitably ensue between Regulus and the girls' parents, who thought he was a Muggle, when Regulus came to retrieve his "dog."

Still, it was a beautiful day with a few hours of sunlight left, and Regulus didn't think that he should ruin the girls' fun just because he'd had a bad day. Instead, he went into the back bedroom, which had been converted into a makeshift home for Buckbeak the hippogriff.

Buckbeak seemed happier to see dinner than he was to see the man carrying it, but he also had no objections to being patten on the flanks and complained at while he ate. Or perhaps it simply took a former Death Eater not to mind being glared at from above a wickedly sharp, currently bloody beak.

". . . and now I think Sirius is off news-hunting again," Regulus announced, "and I'm always afraid that he's going to show too much intelligence while he's goofing off. . . ." His finger's absent attention had brought the rats in Buckbeak's steel gray tail to his attention. "And someone needs to take a brush to you, from the looks of it. Sirius can do that after I drag him home. Speaking of which. . . ." He checked his watch. "It's after seven. I'd better go over there."

Buckbeak flicked his tail in reply, as if to tell Regulus to stop bothering him and get going. Regulus shook his head and obliged.

The walk to the Parkers would normally have been a pleasant one. After all, if it hadn't been a bit hot outside, it would have been nearly perfect weather, and while it was rather hard on the poor man, Regulus did find Mr. Parker's attempts to cover all his and the girls' slips into the more comfortable magical world rather amusing. And with the World Cup going on, he wouldn't put it past Cassie, who was apparently Quidditch crazy, to try discussing it with him, much to her father's horror.

Even today, his irritation had lessened a bit by the time he paused to shrug his coat off.

By chance he slung it over his left shoulder, which gave him a good look at his left forearm, and his breath caught in his chest. It was back.

Well, if he were honest with himself it had never really gone away, only faded and lost its shape, until it looked like a series of splotchy burn scars, which he had passed it off as for thirteen years. Muggles and wizards alike didn't know to look for it, and except for a moment the previous year when Sirius had asked about it, he'd ceased to think of it as a mark. It was just an old scar from a past act of stupidity.

Now it was more.

It wasn't clear yet, thankfully. Even on a deserted street, he didn't want something like it out openly. But _he_ could tell what it was. The vague shape of a skull, and a twisted line, which would eventually harden into the contours of a snake, curling from and around it.

"Damn," he muttered. This didn't seem as if it was nearly enough, and he thought about adding in a few of the newly acquired French swearwords, but eventually he decided that _nothing_ could possibly be enough and left it at "damn."

And to think that Regulus had been stupid enough to hope the man was dead.

After a few minutes of shocked silence a bird squawked in the trees, dragging Regulus back into reality. He couldn't simply stand there, staring at his branded arm. He shook his head, pulled his coat back on, and continued over to the Parkers'.

* * *

Trenton Parker was seated on the garden bench with a book in hand and his wand behind his ear, which was not a wise idea for any number of reasons. Regulus could almost hear Dolohov, who was as paranoid as he'd heard Alastor Moody had become, asking at the top of his voice if Mr. Parker wanted his brains blown out. To which Bella would probably have replied yes, apparently he did, and proceed to assist him to that end.

Regulus shuddered and tried to push the Dark Mark out of his mind.

The other reason it was stupid was much less morbid— it wasn't exactly something he could easily explain should a Muggle ask him about it.

"Excuse me, sir, but have you seen Snuffles?" he asked.

Mr. Parker jumped, reached immediately for his wand, and after a moment set it casually beside him as if it was nothing more than a stick. "Mr. Fox?"

"Reg," Regulus muttered, but he shook his head. Since neither was completely comfortable with each other, it was no surprise they were still referring to each other formally, even though Regulus knew all three of his daughters well enough to have mentally put them into Houses.

"I think I saw Amanda playing with him a few minutes ago."

"Good. I don't mind that he comes over here, really," Regulus added, "I just wish I knew how he got the door open without anyone catching him." He really did wonder this, and today he resolved to ask Sirius about it when they got back home. Anything to keep his mind off of his arm.

Mr. Parker shook his head. "And I thought cats were the great escape artists."

"Oh, they are, all right," Regulus told him. "Trust me, just because I've got a dog right now doesn't mean I'm not a cat person." He shook his head, put his fingers to his lips, and whistled.

Nothing happened. Usually Sirius snapped out an irritable bark when he was called, as if to remind Regulus that he didn't have to come, he was only continuing the ruse that he was a pet. Even when he didn't, Regulus could often hear him moving.

"He'd better be out of earshot," Regulus muttered. He was in no mood to put up with Sirius being ornery right now, especially when he wasn't entirely sure he was going to tell his brother the truth when Sirius inevitably asked what was making him so short.

As he spoke, however, Sirius appeared, with six-year-old Amanda Parker hanging onto his ruff. The girl was holding a green ball and the massive black dog was shooting Regulus a look of utmost reproach. Still, Sirius shook the girl off as gently as possibly, licked her cheek, and padded over to his brother. "There you are," Regulus murmured. "I've been looking all over for you."

Sirius simply cocked his head in a canine shrug.

Regulus rolled his eyes but nodded to the little girl, smiling slightly. "Thanks for looking after him for me."

Amanda nodded.

Sirius started to head towards home, and Regulus bid the two a hasty good bye before following his brother down the path.

* * *

"I just want you to know that your claim that I would find out nothing interesting or useful by nicking _Daily Prophets_ had no basis in reality," Sirius announced as he emerged from Buckbeak's room and wandered into the kitchen, where Regulus was. "Because even if this doesn't prove useful, it's interesting."

"Mind letting me be the judge?" Regulus asked mildly.

"Mad-Eye Moody's the new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts," Sirius announced, sitting down at the kitchen table with a vague smile on his face.

Regulus glanced back and rolled his eyes. These were the times, when Sirius was grinning like a maniac and determined, for no coherent reason, to prove Regulus wrong, when the change in the man over the last few months was obvious. His form had more or less filled out again, so he looked less like a skeleton or vampire, and it was amazing how _normal_ he looked thanks to jeans and another haircut (Sirius had fought him on the latter, but Regulus had insisted). And the change wasn't only physical— time and distance were working their own brand of magic, and it wasn't only a single-minded hunt that was keeping Sirius grounded in reality as it had been when he'd first escaped. "I can think of several completely noncommental reasons for Moody to be teaching," Regulus informed his brother mildly.

"Such as?"

"It's probably the same reason that Dumbledore hired a werewolf. People think the job is jinxed, so you can no longer expect sane, normal teachers to take it. And, well . . . Alastor Moody already thinks something's out to get him. If the job really is jinxed, at least he's prepared."

"Or Dumbledore might want an Auror at the school for some reason or another this year. We've been— or at least, _I've_ been— hearing some pretty strange rumors about Voldemort lately."

"Or maybe Azkaban messed with your head and you're getting as paranoid as Moody or Dolohov."

Sirius snorted and rolled his eyes, but as Regulus turned back to the stove, he heard his brother say quietly, "I wouldn't blame you if you were even more afraid than most to see him come back, Reggie. Really I wouldn't."


	2. Warnings and Fish Sticks

It was getting slowly clearer, and had been for the past week. Regulus had taken to pushing his jacket sleeve up at odd intervals whenever Sirius wasn't around to ask him why in order to make sure he wasn't in some bizarre and extended dream sequence, tracing the curving line as its edges hardened and the viper's head broke off from the skull.

When at least three people at work had asked him what he was doing and Regulus had clamped his hand over his forearm and scrambled for the French equivalent of "Nothing," he decided it was probably time to tell Sirius what was going on. It wasn't as if those Austrian rumors peeking at the edges of the _Daily Prophet_ weren't already worrying him slightly; perhaps it was better that his fears be certain rather than of the "I think he's up to something" sort. If he was honest with himself, he only hadn't told his brother because he didn't want to answer the inevitable barrage of questions.

Sirius saved him the possibility of losing his nerve by being at the kitchen table when Regulus got home. Apparently he had been able to go through the Parker's rubbish bin without being caught by one of the girls this time, because Regulus caught a flicker of movement on the paper he was reading. "Hullo, Reggie," Sirius greeted him absently without looking around. "What's up?"

Since Sirius had never been one to care whether information was presented subtly or not, Regulus launched right into it. "The Dark Mark's back."

Sirius turned around in surprise. "What are you, a Legilimens?"

Before Regulus could ask him what he was on about now, he realized that the movement on the page was the twinkling of green lights in the sky. A glance at the headline told him someone had cast _Morsmordre_ at the Quidditch World Cup. He hesitated, then decided he still didn't want Sirius's questions. "Don't be an idiot, I can see the photo over your shoulder. Can I see the article?"

Sirius nodded mutely and handed it over for his brother to scan, which Regulus did at some length. "Against them," he muttered finally.

"What?" Sirius asked.

"I'll bet you ten to one that whoever cast _Morsmordre_— that whoever put the Dark Mark up," Regulus explained when Sirius merely looked blank, "did it to scare the Death Eaters off, not to support them. Whoever wrote this thing doesn't know them very well. Anyone who'd show their face at the World Cup lied and bribed their way out of prison, after all; not the kind of people who would be happy to see him come back to punish them for it. The castor probably didn't want their cause associated with tomfoolery."

"I think levitating Muggles is a bit more than tomfoolery, Reg," Sirius muttered.

"I'm not saying it isn't," Regulus answered. "But apparently I _am_ thinking like a Death Eater again. It's a bad habit."

Sirius shook his head. "So they're moving again. I told you Dumbledore'd hired Moody for a reason."

"I highly doubt this had anything to do with Voldemort, Sirius," Regulus told him tiredly. "I can't call it harmless high spirits, obviously— it did cause a lot of harm— but spirits were definitely involved. Probably of the alcoholic variety. If Voldemort was involved, he'd be doing something a lot more sinister than levitating Muggles."

"What about the Dark Mark?" Sirius asked. "_Mor_ . . . whatever you called it."

"_Morsmordre_," Regulus repeated. "That's the incantation. I suppose it could be . . . I mean, I would have thought that anyone who's still a serious supporter would have gone to Azkaban or been killed by Aurors by now. But still. That was Britain, and from the sound of the rumors the Dark Lord's in Austria."

"I really wish you wouldn't call him that, Reggie," Sirius muttered under his breath.

"Again, thinking like a Death Eater," Regulus reminded him. Before they could get into an argument on whether or not he should still be thinking like one, he glanced absently out the window, only to see a snowy white owl sitting on the outside sill. "Good God, what's one of those doing here?"

Sirius looked up. "I think it's Harry's," he answered, getting to his feet and unlatching the window.

The bird flew into the room, landed on the table, and fixed Regulus with a look that clearly demanded she be fed. "Well, I guess you did just fly across the channel," he murmured.

While Sirius removed the letter from her leg, Regulus dug through the refrigerator for something that an owl might like. He eventually settled on a few leftover fish sticks, which the bird devoured hungrily as he absently stroked her white feathers and Sirius read. Finally he put the letter down and looked up at Regulus with a half-teasing triumphant grin, but there was no humor in it. "I told you something was wrong."

"Hm?" Regulus asked. He reached absently for the letter, and when Sirius didn't hurriedly pick it back up, he assumed that reading it as all right.

"First Mad-Eye, then the Mark, and now Harry's scar," Sirius pointed out, ticking things off on his fingers. "I was under the impression Mad-Eye was pretty firmly retired, and I don't care what you say, I think the Mark's related to the rumors in Austria. As for the scar . . . well, he wouldn't have written me about it if it happened all the time, and he _did_ say Voldemort was up to something the last time it did anything."

"You're getting as paranoid as Dad and you always were as stubborn as Mum," Regulus murmured, scanning the letter. It had been written prior to the World Cup and most of it was conversationally chatty, but Sirius was right about the scar. "That's never a good combination. Therefore, I'm not even going to _try_ convincing you nothing's wrong."

Sirius raised an eyebrow. "Come to think of it, you've been a bit jumpy lately, too."

"Your paranoia is getting to me," Regulus informed him. "And it's not as if I don't have enough paranoia of my own. And, seriously, why would I know anything you didn't?"

"I'm not trying to say I don't trust you," Sirius informed him impatiently. "But, well . . . he had to have some kind of communication with Death Eaters, if you can still get anything from that. . . ."

Regulus bit his lip. Sirius was striking a bit too close to the truth. He'd always been good at puzzles like that, even the real-life ones, and he was willing to bet anything that it had been Sirius who had first figured out that Remus Lupin was a werewolf. "Don't be ridiculous. He's in Austria, and by all accounts on the verge of death. How would he be sending messages? And _why_, when most of them are in Azkaban?"

He knew he really, really ought to tell Sirius what was going on with the Dark Mark, let him know exactly what was going on. At the same time . . . that was just going to make Sirius stress more, about both Harry and his brother, since there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. Sirius had always been so driven to change the world, and Regulus had always been better at sidelining fear he couldn't do anything about. It was still probably something he was better off keeping to himself.

Sirius rolled his eyes. "If you say so. Still, I think I'm going back to England."

"You are not."

"Reggie, _everything_ seems to be happening in England. The Dark Mark, Mad-Eye, Harry's scar . . . they're all on the other side of the Channel. If whatever's going on involves him— and let's face it, with Voldemort's defeat thirteen years ago it probably does— I want to be over there."

"Austria isn't on the other side of the Channel, and the Ministry of Magic is just waiting for you to be stupid enough to go back," Regulus argued. "How are you going to protect him, anyway?"

"I'm going. You don't have to."

In spite of the anxiety starting to tie a knot in the pit of his stomach, Regulus grinned. "And who's going to keep you out of trouble if I don't?"

"I got along just fine without you during the war," Sirius pointed out, clearly looking for an argument that couldn't be quickly resolved. It would take both of their minds off recent events.

"You had Lupin then."

Sirius opened his mouth as if to argue, then closed it and snorted with laughter. "All right, _touche_. I'm still going back to Britain."

"I'm still going with you."

Sirius shrugged, hunted around the junk drawer until Regulus rolled his eyes and summoned paper and pens from his desk, and started writing Harry a reply. After a moment, Regulus bit his lip, summoned another pen, and started composing a note of his own. "Who's that one to?" Sirius asked.

"Dumbledore. I figure if the most wanted man in Britain is coming back, the only person with a hope in hell of saving your neck if we're caught— and it's a slim hope at that— ought to be told. Maybe he'll have some suggestions or be able to talk some sense into you."

"How are you going to get it to him? You can't just borrow someone's owl, since you won't tell the Parkers you're a wizard."

"I'm just going to Apparate over to the Parisian equivalent of Diagon Alley— don't ask me to pronounce it, everyone winces when I try— fight the Gringott's goblins over the exchange rate, and rent one," Regulus answered with a shrug. "Will it kill you to wait until the weekend to get going? I've got this tonight, and I've got to give some kind of notice at work."

Sirius hesitated, his pen lingering over one of the first lines of the letter.

"It's not absolutely _urgent_, Sirius."

"That's what they said about Grindlewald and eruption of Pompeii," Sirius muttered, but he scribbled the word "immediately" out, signed the letter, and tied it to the owl's leg. "Ready to go home?" he asked her.

The bird swivelled her head over to look at him, as if wondering if he was worth an answer.

"Or," Regulus asked mildly, "would you like something else to eat before the flight?"

The owl chose to devour the all of the remaining fish sticks in the freezer before fluttering to the window and taking off into the sky from there.

* * *

"While I'm here could you do francs to pounds?" Regulus asked the goblin. "I'd rather not fight Muggle customs as well as Gringotts."

The goblin looked at him as if he'd just asked for the entire transaction to be in knuts. Clearly it was possible for him; he just found it incredibly annoying and inconvenient. "Why do you want Muggle money?" he demanded, his long fingers tapping impatiently on the counter.

Regulus considered telling the goblin he was a squib, because that would neatly sum up all the oddities of this conversation, but he settled for vague and honest instead. "I spend most of my time in the Muggle world these days. But recent events've got my brother worried about his godson, and if he goes back to England; I go back to England, because I don't trust him not to do something abysmally stupid."

The goblin nodded, as if this was what was expect of humans— abysmal stupidity.

"So can you?" Regulus repeated.

"How much are you asking me for?" The goblin tapped his long fingers impatiently on the desk, a clear but subtle indication that he wanted Regulus gone so he could get back to terrorizing the more easily intimidated.

"Two hundred pounds?" Regulus asked, knowing it was far more money than he'd probably actually need. They would likely spend all of their time in the woods by Hogsmeade, after all.

The goblin raised an eyebrow. "I had expected you to ask me for more."

Regulus shrugged. "I just need the cash to get home. Will you or won't you make the transaction."

The goblin grumbled, but he made the transaction, while Regulus asked him a few more innocent questions— such as what the exchange rate actually was— that seemed to irritate him more. Finally, however, the goblin was able to wave him off and mutter, "Next victim."

Regulus rolled his eyes as he headed out, glancing around the street for the post office and hoping fervently that Dumbledore had some fairly good ideas for them. After all, he didn't believe his own rationalizations about Austria; it was no wonder Sirius hadn't bought them. Back to England was back into the thick of things.

--  
**Author's Note:** Wow. I wasn't expecting the number of reviews I got for the first chapter, so thank you everyone for very pleasantly surprising me. Mersang: Thanks for the correction about the right arm/left arm thing. Jackline: Well, if it makes you feel any better, the wall will have to come down in '94 or 1995 will fall flat. Mizz Moony Luver and Gabwr: And I thought Reg and I were the only ones in the "Tuesdays suck" camp, with everyone else with Garfield in "Monday sucks". (grins) Again, thank you everyone for the comments on last chapter and in advance for the ones you will (hopefully) leave this chapter. Cheers! — Loki


	3. Bellatrix

"You've been a little jumpy," Sirius had said. By the end of the week, that would have been an understatement. Regulus knew that once he was back in Britain, he would calm down because there would be more pressing things to think about— hunting, the possibility of dementors, keeping Sirius from being overprotective or stupid or both— but his remaining affairs in France proved easy to tie up, leaving him with far too much time to dwell on both the possibilities and the past.

Regulus could, after all, still remember when he'd first gotten the Mark. It had been Bellatrix who had ensnared him, of course— only Sirius had had the same hold over him when he was young, and in 1979 Sirius hadn't been a part of his life anymore. Logic failed when it came to Bellatrix even more than Sirius– her passion consumed everything, and to an extent it was better to just walk after her lest he be dragged.

He was still sweating and trying to recover from white-hot pain after his first Death Eater meeting, staring at the Mark, as ugly a black when it was first branded as it was when Voldemort called his followers, before it really occurred to him that following Bella, while easiest, had never been the wisest of ideas.

Bella had been there at the time, which was probably on of the reasons he couldn't articulate the horror he felt. She'd said she was proud of him and that he'd recover before seizing his arm and demanding that they Apparate to Malfoy Manor for a celebratory round of drinks.

Before he could say anything in reply, she'd Apparated them both to the front gates. Regulus's retort— that he didn't know if they should celebrate being scarred for life— became a reminder that he had passed his Apparating test several months previously and knew exactly where the manor was.

As expected, Bellatrix had only laughed and dragged him inside.

Narcissa and Lucius evidently had known they were coming, since they were both seated in the parlor with a bottle of wine. Bella had immediately sat on the opposite side of the couch from Lucius and declared her intention to get him drunk, claiming it was the only way he would be any fun all night.

Regulus, who had already heard enough of Lucius and Bella's bickering to last him a lifetime, turned to Narcissa without waiting for Lucius's inevitable reply that she could try. "So how's the baby?"

"As far as I can tell, perfectly all right," Narcissa, who was about five months pregnant, replied. "So you've committed yourself? You've taken the Mark?"

Hesitantly, Regulus nodded.

"Good. Let's see it."

Bella agreed to this command with enthusiasm and Regulus hitched up his sleeve so Narcissa could see. He couldn't help but think that his cousin seemed a lot more pleased about it than he was, as she traced it with her pale fingers.

"I just wish he didn't have to brand it on our _skin_," Regulus had muttered at the time.

Bella had raised an eyebrow. "And where else would he put it?"

"I don't know, just not on our bodies. On something we could carry around" —Regulus quailed a little under his cousin's dark glare but resolved to finish the sentence— "or at least not something so _permanent_."

"Why would we want to take it off, though?"

This wasn't a path he wanted to be treading down, not with Bella or in front of Lucius. Regulus's gaze dropped back down to his arm, still in Cissy's grasp, and he muttered something irrelevant to his thoughts about the Ministry of Magic.

Bella had only laughed. "Why would _they_ ever know to look?"

That had been the first of two signs that she had become Bellatrix Lestrange, Death Eater, rather than the Bella Black he'd known as a child. The other was the first time he'd seen her kill.

He couldn't remember the victim all that clearly— a blonde woman of about twenty-five, perhaps six months along. It was only about a week after he'd taken the Mark, and all he could think of when he looked at her was Cissy and _her_ baby.

Bella had tried to tell _him_ to kill her, and the tone of her voice had frightened him so much that he'd squeaked the spell a few times without any accompanying flash of green light. He couldn't hate someone he didn't know, particularly not someone so obviously terrified of him. And if he couldn't hate her, he couldn't kill her with magic.

Finally Bellatrix, impatient, had shoved him out of the way and snapped that she'd do it herself. The look on her face when she had— cold, emotionless, as if she didn't feel _anything_— scared him more than her rage had. The Bella he knew was moody and temperamental, but never apathetic. Never as if someone's death didn't matter to her.

After the green glow had faded, she'd rounded on his with a fury that would soon become familiar, but Rodolphus stopped her. "He's young, Bella, not used to using that much power in a single spell," he told his wife, laying a restraining hand on her shoulder. "It took Rabastan some time, too, when he first started."

For a moment it looked as if she might turn and hex him, too, but she relaxed. "All right. He _is_ young. Just, Regulus?"

He froze, staring at her and not sure what to expect.

"Learn how to kill. Soon. I don't want to have to kill you, too, but I will if I have to."

She stalked off, and Rodolphus told him to take a moment to regain his bearings. Then he chased after his wife to calm her down.

Regulus had nodded at his back and glanced over at the body, fighting down a wave of nausea. It wasn't as if she'd even _done_ anything to the woman, but the life was still extinguished. "The thing is, Bella," he'd whispered in a shaking voice, "I don't know that I _can_ learn."

* * *

"Reggie!"

Sirius's hand landed on Regulus's shoulder as he started to stir, and at that the younger brother sat bolt upright in bed, scrabbling at his pockets until he found his wand, which he whipped out and pointed at the man's chest.

Sirius put his hands out in front of him, palms out, and backed up a few paces. "Easy, Reg."

"Oh, it's just you."

"'_Just_' me?" Sirius asked huffily, crossing his arms over his chest and assuming a look of badly-feigned hurt. "When am I ever 'just' me?"

"Sirius, not now," Regulus groaned, reaching up to rub his temples.

"All right." Sirius ran his fingers distractedly through his hair, staring at his brother with some concern, but his eyes returned gradually to the length of wood in Regulus's hand. "You sleep with your wand?"

"Old habits die hard," Regulus answered, shrugging. He put it on the night stand so it was no longer a threat and added, "and if you're theories are right, it's a habit we could all do with developing."

"Yeah," Sirius muttered uncertainly. "Reg, are you all right?"

"I'm fine. Now, however, it's my turn to ask a question— why did you wake me up?"

"Well, I just fed Buckbeak breakfast and found your door was opened and you were muttering," Sirius answered. "That's not wholly unusual; you tend to do that in your sleep. But when I heard our dear cousin's name, I figured that whatever it was you were dreaming about, you might like to stop."

Regulus nodded. He'd been right.

"You up for good?" Sirius added softly.

"It's a bit early for it, but I can be," his brother muttered, wondering why Sirius wanted to know. He was opening his mouth to ask when the answer hit him. "Oh. It's four in the morning on Saturday, isn't it?"

Sirius shrugged. "You did say you wanted to be out of here before that many Muggles were up."

"Yeah." Regulus picked his wand back up and handed it to his brother. "Why don't you disillusion that hippogriff and tether him outside while I get dressed and debate the wisdom of putting anything in my stomach considering my abysmal fear of heights and the prospect of another damn two-day flight?"

Sirius smiled and mock saluted him before leaving.

Regulus thanked Merlin for the semi-darkness that saved him from untoward questions— he was still a bit preoccupied with the Mark— and threw on a pair of jeans, a t-shirt, and his jacket before wandering into the kitchen. Regardless of his opinion of a cross-channel hippogriff flight, after all, he really ought to eat something.

He was slicing what was left of the bread when another owl, this one brown and clearly built for speed, tapped on the window. Regulus undid that latch and it immediately muscled its way through the crack and attacked one of the slices of bread with gusto, ignoring Regulus as he untied the letter and unrolled it to find two pieces of parchment and Dumbledore's loopy script.

The only real assurance in the note was that the owl couldn't have been intercepted— it was charmed to go blank if anyone but Sirius or Regulus looked at it. Dumbledore, after all, wasn't the type to give any platitudes about student safety, and he only assured Sirius that he was taking every precaution he could. If, however, Sirius still wanted to be closer to hand this year, he had enclosed directions to a place near Hogsmeade that they might find comfortable.

It wasn't the sensible argument for staying in France that Regulus had wanted from the headmaster, but the directions were nevertheless welcome. There were too many ghosts in the Shrieking Shack for Sirius, and Regulus didn't want his brother to relapse into the obsession he'd had with Peter Pettigrew earlier in the year.

He flipped the first of the two pieces of parchment over and scrawled a quick thanks. The owl, who had finished his snack and was now looking expectantly at Regulus, held out his leg. He ruffled his feathers a bit and fluttered out the window as Sirius reentered the kitchen. "What was the post?"

"A letter from Dumbledore," Regulus answered, looking down at the second piece of parchment. One side was a map and the other a list of detailed directions from Hogsmeade. "He recommended a place to stay."

"There's an inn that doesn't mind convicts and dead men?" Sirius quipped.

"That is the first time I've heard Azkaban described as an inn," Regulus answered dryly. "It's a cave, Sirius. Please don't be stupid. I think he knew we didn't want to spend another school year in the Shrieking Shack."

"Well . . . he's right on my count, at least," Sirius answered quietly. Then he shook his head and brightened considerably. "And there is a difference between being stupid and making a joke, you know. Aren't I allowed to do the latter?"

"Not when I'm about to spend the better part of the next two days near water and four or five hundred feet in the air on a creature that weighs twelve-hundred pounds, should not technically be capable of flight, and can't swim."

"Reg, Buckbeak's fine."

"On the ground, he is," Regulus retorted. "Are you going to give me my wand back?"

Sirius handed it over.

"Thanks. Let me disillusion the both of us and let's get on that bloody bird, shall we?"

**--  
Author's Note:** All right, glad to have this one up— even though putting up the first chapter with a flashback does make me a bit nervous. Anyway, in response to a few reviews: Mizz Moony Luver: Yeah, it did occur to me that there were no tropical birds in France earlier. But I decided that Regulus would rather be somewhere where he spoke the language (if not precisely fluently) than someplace canonically correct (but I don't mind the Canon Nazi, really). Firorenza: Yeah, I'll be the first to admit that my updates on Mugglenet are much, much more sporadic than they are here, although I'm glad you found and enjoyed both this and 1993. Thank you to everyone else, too, for all the reviews! I'm still a bit pleasantly shocked by the response. Cheers! — Loki


	4. Warning Signs

Buckbeak landed inside a copse of trees with his usual pair of jolts— one for the front feet and another for the back. Regulus immediately slid off, still clutching Buckbeak's flank to steady himself, since he was still shaking a little.

"Are you all right?" Sirius asked, joining him on the ground.

Regulus's reflex response to a question like that— "Do I _look_ all right?"— wouldn't work this time, because although he _was_ all right, Sirius was asking because he still looked terrified. "I'm fine. Or I will be in a minute."

"I had no idea you were that afraid of heights."

"Never occurred to you to ask yourself why I only ever got on a broomstick once as a kid?" Regulus couldn't help but ask.

"Well, Cissy never exactly cared for flying, either," Sirius answered, shrugging. "And you never seemed to have any trouble when we were out on the roof or up on the Astronomy Tower."

"I'm fine when there's something like ground underneath me," Regulus retorted. "And it doesn't help that Buckbeak rocks so much." He shook his head and straightened. "Let's get the hippogriff out of sight, shall we? Or at least you?"

Sirius grinned slightly and transformed. "That's one down," Regulus admitted, pulling Dumbledore's map out of his pocket.

The headmaster had left detailed instructions, so the cave wasn't hard to find. What was difficult was climbing a mountain with an easily distracted hippogriff in tow. After all, Buckbeak hadn't had much opportunity to get outside for several months, and he was making it very clear that he wanted time to sniff the air and investigate anything that seemed interesting. It didn't help that Sirius kept disappearing at odd intervals and reappearing, once with some scratches across his nose where he'd stuck it into the lair of a stray cat who hadn't appreciated the interruption.

Regulus was therefore frustrated and muttering death threats by the time that he dragged Buckbeak into the cave, Sirius bounding in after him.

The cave itself overlooked Hogsmeade, high enough on a precipice that they couldn't see anyone and no one looking up at the mountain would notice them. It was also fairly spacious for having an entrance Buckbeak could barely squeeze through.

"Not exactly what I would call home," Sirius announced. He'd returned to human form immediately upon entering and was now looking around with a vaguely curious expression. "But it does beat the hell out of the haunts in the Shrieking Shack."

"I thought you said there _were_ no ghosts in there," Regulus couldn't help but note mildly, searching for some place he could tether Buckbeak.

"You know what I mean."

"Yeah, yeah . . . home'd be the same way for me."

"Home. . . ." Sirius cocked his head for a minute, as if trying to place the word. "You mean Grimmauld?" he asked finally.

Regulus lifted an eyebrow. "Where else would I mean?"

"Well, it was never really home to me," Sirius admitted, running his fingers through his hair distractedly. "And it just seems a bit odd that you've been out of there for fourteen years and it's still where home is."

"I never really managed to settle— in the first year I convinced myself it was because I was scared, but after Voldemort fell" —he shrugged— "I guess I just never had the people that _made_ it home." He found a convenient rock to wedge Buckbeak's tether into and added, "Why? Where was home to you?"

"I guess the closest I've ever come's been James's," Sirius admitted quietly. "So home's pretty much gone for me, too."

For a minute the two stood there awkwardly, Sirius with his hand in his hair and Regulus playing absently with his glasses. Finally, Regulus shook his head and changed the subject. "Well, one of us'd probably best go see if we can get a paper," he murmured. "It's been nearly a week since we've seen one, after all, and something may've happened. You're the least conspicuous. . . ."

Sirius nodded and transformed back into the dog.

* * *

"I'll bet you I know why Dumbledore got Moody out of retirement now," Sirius announced as a reentered the cave, carrying a few papers.

Regulus, who had been trying to chase out rats in fox form, looked up at his brother, startled. Then he shook his head and changed back. "Really?"

"Apparently they're having a go at bringing the Triwizard Tournament back this year. At Hogwarts."

Regulus raised an eyebrow. "Would you mind enlightening me as to how this has anything whatsoever to do with a paranoid ex-Auror? I still hold that it's because the job's jinxed."

Sirius passed him a headline. "Read the two other headmaster's names."

The front page was emblazoned with a picture of the Triwizard judges— head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation Barty Crouch, head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports Ludo Bagman, Dumbledore, the Beauxbaton headmistress Olympe Maxime, and the Durmstrang headmaster Igor Karkaroff. Dumbledore, Bagman, and Madame Maxime were smiling vaguely at the camera; Crouch was wearing a solemn look, and Karkaroff was downright scowling.

"Who in their right mind would put _Igor Karkaroff_ in charge of a school?" Regulus demanded.

"No idea," Sirius admitted, "but—"

"I mean, who would put a known Death Eater in charge of eleven-year-old children?" Regulus continued, completely ignoring his brother.

Sirius's next remark, however, cut through the beginning of his rant. "Well, Dumbledore for one."

Regulus narrowed his eyes and made a few quick connections. "Sirius, will you please not make this about Severus Snape?"

"I wasn't. But it got your attention," Sirius answered, smiling slightly. "Now if I could finish explaining my theory. . . ?"

Regulus crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the cave wall. "Fine."

"All right, so if you've got an ex-Death Eater on the grounds you're going to want somebody to keep an eye on him, won't you? And dammit, Reg, Moody's the one who put Karkaroff into Azkaban in the first place!"

"Was he?"

Sirius nodded.

"All right. That's one mad theory from you that makes a certain amount of sense. It didn't have anything to do with Voldemort after all, then."

Sirius made a face at him. "Now, how about his other bizarre staff appointments?"

"Sirius, I told you not to make this about Snape."

"I'm not trying to make anything about Snape, I just want to know why Dumbledore hired him," Sirius answered irritably. "Maybe he's better than Karkaroff, since he _is_ under someone's thumb and Snape at least doesn't back down under pressure, so he won't necessarily go straight back to Voldemort, but he's _still_ a Death Eater."

Regulus rolled his eyes. "Then ask _Dumbledore_, not me. Now, I'm going to continue trying to get the rats out of this cave," he announced. "Are you going to help me or are you going to brood?"

_

* * *

_

Dear Sirius and Regulus,

_I reckon I just imagined my scar hurting, I was half asleep when I wrote you last time. There's no point in coming back, everything's fine here. Don't worry about me, my head feels completely normal._

—_Harry_

The letter arrived very late one night a week or so into the term, tied to the leg of the same snowy owl that had found them in France. Sirius was hunting at the time, so Regulus untied the letter and scanned it without risk of a snide remark— anyway, it was addressed to the both of them.

Much to the disgust of the bird, he also chuckled a bit over the missive. Harry was worried about Sirius, and Sirius was worried about Harry, and Regulus wasn't entirely sure who had the more legitimate grounds for that worry.

When the owl let out her disgusted hoot, Regulus automatically patted his jean and jacket pockets for something for her without success. "Did I scare you or are you just annoyed that I think your master's crazy if he thought this would work?" he asked instead, reaching out to stroke her feathers.

The owl shot him another disdainful look but allowed herself to be stroked for a minute or two.

Regulus picked up one of the _Daily Prophets_ now lying scattered about the cave and wiped it clean with his wand. Then, pulling a ballpoint out of his jacket pocket, he set about putting Harry's mind at ease:

_Nice try, Harry, but if it was a valid argument I'd've kept Sirius in hiding with it to begin with. Still, your scar isn't the only warning sign and most of them are on this side of the Channel, so keep your eyes open._

Regulus reached up to adjust his glasses and regarded the preening owl in front of him, aware that "just worry about yourself" was not going to cut it for a Gryffindor. It rarely soothed _his_ fears, after all, and Slytherins had much greater self-preservation instincts.

Still, after a moment he just shrugged and finished the letter.

_We're back in the country and well-hidden, and we want you to keep us posted on what's going on at Hogwarts. And if Sirius has to rely on sensationalist news articles for information much longer, he may wind up breaking into Hogwarts again, and you know how much of a disaster that was last year. Don't use your snowy owl, though, keep changing owls, and while I know you don't want to hear this, don't worry about Sirius, I assure you I can handle him. From the looks of things, after all, you'd be better off watching your own back._

—_Regulus_

He folded the letter, sealed it with a spell, and tied it to the owl's leg. "Sorry to send you back without anything," he told her as he carried her to the mouth of the cave. "You can't have had an easy time tracking us down, after all."

She hooted a reply rather more pleasantly than she had previously before fluttering off.

"So what was that?"

Regulus jumped and turned in time to see Sirius emerge from the scrub. "You're back?"

"Yeah. No luck but I'm exhausted." He cocked his head, looking back at the bird as she flapped off. "Is that Harry's owl? It looked familiar."

"Yeah."

Sirius raised an eyebrow. "What'd he write you about, then?"

"Well, he wrote both of us in attempt to keep us on the other side of the Channel," Regulus explained, handing him the letter.

Sirius scanned it and his lips twitched slightly. "He sounds exactly like his mother, to the point at which you know he's rationalizing just to keep us out of trouble. What'd you tell him about it?"

"To keep in touch with a less conspicuous owl and that as amazing as it may seem, I really do have your overprotective streak under control."

Sirius made a face, mostly teasingly. "Do you make it sound like I'm a mental patient on purpose?" he wanted to know.

"You realize you are only proving to me just how desperately you need sleep?" Regulus asked him quietly.

Sirius rolled his eyes theatrically. "G'night, Reg."

**--  
Author's Notes:** Neither my smoothest chapter or my best, either, but I've finally got the story in a place where I can kick off the GoF plot points. And hopefully the server won't go nuts as I post this time. _Anyway,_ thanks to everyone who left a review last chapter, and as, always, a thank you in advance to those of you who leave a comment this time! Cheers! — Loki


	5. The Triwizard Tournament

"Reg, what do you remember about Karkaroff?" Sirius asked as his brother entered the cave in Reynard form, a rabbit between his jaws.

Regulus dropped the rabbit and transformed. "Why on earth do you ask?"

Sirius simply handed him another letter from Harry. Regulus's confusion only grew as he scanned it. "Somebody entered Harry in the Triwizard Tournament?" he asked, looking up only absently to see his brother's impatient nod. Not only was it a bizarre turn of events, Sirius shouldn't be taking it half so calmly, not when people _died_ in that competition.

He glanced around the cave for the owl that had delivered the message and found a large barn owl on a ledge with its head under its wing, asleep. So Sirius must have already had time to throw his fit and remember that entry into the Triwizard Tournament was binding. Regulus bit his lip and handed the letter back. "Wow," was all he could think of to say.

"So what do you remember about Karkaroff?" Sirius repeated.

"Why do you ask?" Regulus asked again, still trying to reconcile the two halves of this conversation. "You don't think _he_ put the boy's name in there, do you?"

"_Yes_, as a matter of fact I do."

Regulus raised an eyebrow. "Why?"

"I'll bet you anything this has something to do with those rumors in Austria, and Karkaroff was a Death Eater, and dammit, Reggie, who else is there that might've done it?"

"I can't think of anyone off the top of my head," Regulus admitted, taking a penknife out of his pocket and leaning down to skin the rabbit. "But still, what I remember about Karkaroff boils down to this: he's a coward. An intelligent coward, but still a coward. I doubt highly that he'd go back to a man he'd betrayed."

"If Voldemort offered him a sec—"

Regulus cut him off with a derisive snort. "Voldemort doesn't _give_ second chances. Igor Karkaroff and I both forfeited our lives to him when we betrayed him; I just have the advantage of letting him think I've already paid up."

"Have you got any better suggestions?" Sirius demanded, crossing his arms over his chest.

"No. I guess we're back to page one."

"I guess." Sirius agreed reluctantly. "Unless . . . I mean, wouldn't Voldemort put off killing you with a 'prove your loyalty' offer if he thought he could get what he wanted out of you before doing you in?"

_He's a dog with a bone when he's being stubborn,_ Regulus thought, not for the first time. He bit his lip. "Well, yes. I doubt Karkaroff would be stupid enough to take it, since there's not enough human in the Dark Lord to take the Unbreakable Vow, but . . . it's possible."

"And it's the best explanation we can think of," Sirius added. "I'm warning Harry. Face to face."

"How?"

"I'll think of something."

"While you're warning him about Karkaroff, I'd warn him about the Durmstrang champion, too. He'll have added the Dark Arts to the school curriculum."

Sirius nodded. "Definitely got to do it before the first task. Any idea when that it?"

"Late this month, if the _Daily Prophet_'s any judge," Regulus answered. He picked one up, tore off a page, and wiped it blank with his wand before handing it and a pen to his brother.

"Thanks," Sirius muttered as he started to scribble.

* * *

"I still can't believe you talked me into this," Regulus muttered a few weeks later, stoking the fire.

"Yeah, yeah," Sirius muttered, grinning absently at the half-hearted glare his brother was shooting him. For all the world, after all, Regulus currently reminded him of Remus Lupin on a dare. "Any idea how much time we have?"

"Not an inkling," Regulus replied. The fire was lit and he straightened and scanned the mantle. "Here's the floo powder," he announced, picking it up. "Remind me again why we had to break in? And why no one ever thinks to use the lesser known locking spells on anything but the door? Everyone but Dad, that is."

Sirius rolled his eyes. "Do you think _I_ can just knock on someone's door and ask if I can borrow the floo for a minute?" he asked, taking the powder.

"I know, it just makes me nervous," Regulus admitted. "I'll keep watch."

Sirius nodded and threw a handful of floo powder into the flames. It had been over a decade since he'd used the stuff and he'd hated it when he'd had to, hated the sensation of not quite being in one piece, but he certainly didn't have any better ideas. He glanced over at Regulus, who was standing by the window like a cat in a dog pound, shook his head, and stuck it into the green-tinted flames. "Gryffindor common room," he muttered, closing his eyes.

When the spinning sensation stopped and he opened his eyes, it was to see Harry sitting by the fire, his gaze drifting slowly back to the flames. When the boy saw him among them, he jumped, broke into a grin, and slid out of his chair. "Hullo, Sirius— how are you doing?"

"Never mind me," Sirius snapped, "how about you?"

"I'm—" Harry started, then hesitated. "I'm not entirely sure. I mean, of course I didn't expect _everyone_ to believe me when I said I didn't enter the tournament, certainly not the Slytherins, and the Hufflepuffs have their own champion, but I thought maybe Ravenclaw . . . and _my own House_, but no one believes me except you and Regulus and Dumbledore and Hagrid and Hermione. Not even Ron. . . ."

He shook his head. "And then Rita Skeeter went and wrote that article about me, where I hadn't told her anything really and she just made things up. No one's shut up about that, either. Well, unless you count Ron. . . ."

Harry bit his lip, but before Sirius could open his mouth, he launched into his monologue again. "Ron won't believe me, he won't even _talk_ to me anymore. Hermione says he's jealous, what with all his brothers and me being famous, but _still_. . . . He's got know I don't want to be, not for having my parents murdered. . . . But Hermione told me it's the last straw and now he's mad at me for no reason.

"And tonight Hagrid brought me into the Forest to show me the first task, and it's dragons, Sirius. I'm a goner," Harry finished.

Sirius realized he was biting his lip and, since the boy seemed to be done, launched into his own speech. "Dragons I can tell you how to deal with, Harry, but I'll get to that in a minute— we haven't got much time, I had to break into someone's house to use the fireplace; Reg's watching the door but he can't stop them, only tell me, and we've got no idea when they'll be home. Anyway, there are a couple of things I need to warn you about."

"What?" Harry asked, as if he couldn't think of anything more pressing that his impending death by dragon. Under normal circumstances, Sirius would have agreed with him, but these weren't normal circumstances.

"Karkaroff. He was a Death Eater, Harry— you do know what Death Eaters are, right?" When Harry nodded, he continued. "He was caught, he was in Azkaban with me for awhile, but he got released. I'll bet anything he's why Dumbledore wanted an Auror at Hogwarts this year, especially one as good as Moody."

"Karkaroff got released?" Harry asked slowly, as if he couldn't quite believe what was being said to him.

A grim smile flashed briefly over Sirius's face— it _was_ pretty unbelievable. "Yeah, he made a deal with the Ministry, said he'd seen the error of his ways, and then he named names. Put a bunch of other people in Azkaban in his place. Nearly as popular as Peter in there, he is. And Reggie says he'll be teaching the Dark Arts, so watch out for the Durmstrang champion as well."

"Okay. . . ." Harry said uncertainly. "Are you saying Karkaroff put my name in the goblet? Because he's a really good actor if he did, since he seemed pretty angry. He wanted to stop me from competing."

"We know he's a good actor," Sirius reminded him. "He convinced the Ministry to let him go, didn't he? I'm not sure Reg could've and he really _did_ switch sides. Then again, open betrayal never was Reggie's style. . . . Anyway, I've been keeping an eye on the _Daily Prophet_—"

"You and the rest of the world," Harry muttered bitterly.

"—and reading between the lines on that Skeeter woman's articles. Someone tried to stop Mad-Eye from getting here." Harry opened his mouth to protest, but Sirius plowed on without giving him a chance. "Yeah, I know she said it was another false alarm, but I somehow doubt it. Someone knew their job would be a lot more difficult with him around. No one'll pay too much attention, of course, Mad-Eye's heard intruders a bit too often, but I'll bet he can still spot the real thing. He was the best Auror the Ministry ever had, after all."

Harry nodded hesitantly. "So . . . you're saying Karkaroff's trying to kill me? But— why?"

Sirius bit his lip, trying to figure out how to explain. "There have been some pretty strange things going on lately. The Death Eater's have been more active than usual lately— they showed themselves for the first time in over a decade at the Quidditch World Cup, didn't they? Someone set off the Dark Mark . . . and— did you hear about the Ministry of Magic witch that's gone missing?"

"Bertha Jorkins?" Harry asked.

"Exactly . . . she disappeared in Austria, and that's definitely the last place either Reg or I heard any rumors about Voldemort . . . and she worked in the Department of Magic Games and Sports, didn't she? So she would definitely have known that the Triwizard Tournament was coming up?"

"Yeah, but . . . how likely is it, really, that she'd have walked straight into Voldemort?" Harry asked sensibly.

"Listen, I knew Bertha Jorkins," Sirius told him grimly. "She was a few years ahead of your dad and me at Hogwarts. And she was an idiot. Very nosy, but no sense at all, and that's not a good combination, Harry. It's probably the easiest type of person to lure into a trap."

"So . . . so you think Voldemort found out about the Tournament?" Harry asked. "And . . . and you think Karkaroff might've put my name in the goblet on his orders?"

"I don't know, Harry," Sirius admitted, shaking his head. "I just don't know. Karkaroff doesn't strike me as the type to go back to Voldemort unless Voldemort was strong enough to protect him, and Reg swears up and down that Karkaroff forfeited any protection in getting out of Azkaban and isn't stupid enough to fall for a sham. . . . But whoever put your name in the goblet of fire did it for a reason, and I can't help but think how easy it would be to hurt you through one of the tasks and make it look like an accident."

"Looks like a really good plan from where I'm standing," Harry said grimly. "Just stand back and let the dragons take care of me."

That brought the subject back to the issue Harry had first mentioned. Since it _was_ urgent and goodness knew they were running out of time, Sirius started speaking as quickly as he could. "Yeah, about those dragons, Harry— there's a fairly simple way. Don't be tempted to use a Stunner— dragons are too strong and too powerfully magical to be knocked out by a single one of those, you need about half a dozen wizards casting them simultaneously—"

"Yeah, I know, I just saw."

"But there are a few ways to do it alone," Sirius said. "All you need's a simple spell. Just—"

But he never got to finish his sentence. There was a bump from somewhere, and Harry started and looked around, holding up a hand to stop him from continuing. After a few moments of tense silence, it came again. "_Go!_" Harry hissed. "Someone's coming!"

The boy started to get to his feet and Sirius pulled his head back out the fire, rubbing his neck as if he weren't entirely certain his head was properly attached.

Regulus looked over from the window and pulled the drapery entirely closed. "So . . . how'd it go?"

"He's warned at least," Sirius answered grimly, getting to his feet and massaging his knees where they'd been digging into the floor. "Apparently Hagrid dragged him into the Forbidden Forest to warn him about the first task tonight, and it has something to do with dragons. Somebody started down the steps as I started to tell him how to deal with it."

"He's bright, he'll find it," Regulus answered, shrugging. "And wouldn't you tell him what to use technically be cheating?" he added mildly.

"Considering how he got in, I don't _care_," Sirius snapped. "I just want him to get through all three of them alive."

Regulus nodded, pulled out his wand, and waved it at the fireplace, dousing the flames. "Point taken. Now, if you wouldn't mind transforming? The last thing we need is for some insomniac witch to look out her window in the dead of night and see Sirius Black standing in her neighbor's living room."

Sirius nodded and transformed into the giant black dog.

Regulus tucked his wand into his pocket, pulled back the drapes and undid the window latch. He climbed out the window, hoping the hypothetical insomniac witch still had her shutters drawn, and waited for Sirius to make the leap. As soon as the dog was standing on the Hogsmeade cobbles, he closed the window and muttered the spell to lock it again. Then he transformed himself and the two canines started back up the mountain toward the cave.

**

* * *

Author's Note:** This is, judging from the looks of my mental picture of the rest of 1994, the only truly Sirius centric chapter in this particular Double Trouble instalment. I also now have to disclaim a few of those lines, expecially Harry's, which were taken directly from the book, and Harry's letter in the last chapter, which is almost word-for-word from GoF and which I forgot to disclaim last chapter. Also, thanks to Jackline for pointing out that the EU didn't switch to the Euro until 1999. In other news, thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter, please make my day and review this one! Cheers! — Loki


	6. The First Task

Sirius woke Regulus up very early on Monday morning, much to his little brother's disgust. "What on earth is going on?" he demanded.

"First task's today," Sirius told him simply, as if that explained everything.

"And it's not until this afternoon," Regulus snapped. "I can understand that you want to come up for it, really I can, but I don't understand what it has to do with _five in the damn morning_. I'm going back to sleep."

"How?" Sirius demanded.

"Because I don't see the point in sitting here and fretting!" Regulus exclaimed, putting his head back down on his arms. "If you can't sleep anymore . . . I don't know, go hunting or something. You'll drive me mad. Not to mention yourself."

He heard Sirius growling softly in frustration, but his eyes had already closed again. "_Reggie_. . . ."

Regulus sighed and opened his eyes again. And he'd thought he was babysitting when Sirius was after Peter. He could understand his brother's feelings then. He would never have had the nerve to do it himself, but he could understand the desire to do it. Now, he couldn't quite grasp why Sirius was doing this to himself, driving himself insane with worry over Harry. "No, I mean it. Do something to get your mind off of the first task until about noon, when I'll let you start fretting again. I don't even care if it involves chasing cats. Just don't bother me."

Sirius stared at him for a few moments, as if he found Regulus's opinion on the matter equally incomprehensible. "You're going to keep insisting that, aren't you?"

"Since there's nothing we can do to help the kid, yes," Regulus muttered, rubbing a hand over one eye. Sirius was swimming in front of his vision he was so tired. Not fuzzy as he was whenever Regulus wasn't wearing his glasses, physically swimming. "You're just torturing yourself, and I'd rather you didn't torture me, too. Hunt."

For another moment or so Sirius was wearing a very familiar and slightly worrying stubborn look, but he shook his head. "I'll try."

"Good," Regulus muttered sleepily, closing his eyes once again.

* * *

Sirius didn't return until Regulus had woken again and gotten up properly, and even then he paced the cave restlessly, getting on his brother's nerves and on several occasions provoking a startled squawk from the hippogriff.

Finally, around eleven Regulus couldn't take it any longer— the task started in two hours, anyway, and going through the Forest to get there would kill at least forty-five minutes, during which time their minds would be occupied with directions rather than dragons. "Fine," he growled, getting to his feet. "Let's go."

Sirius nodded and transformed into the shaggy black dog before bounding out. Regulus took fox form and sprinted after him on the stubby little legs his Animagus left him with. Once in the Forest, aware that he'd already lost his brother, he took to the trees. It was the natural element of gray foxes and in any case faster then leaping over the giant roots in the Forest.

Still, the familiar feel of bark rather than dirt under his paws and the trees of the Forbidden Forest themselves— not to mention chasing Sirius— brought back a memory from his school days. He'd only went looking for "Padfoot" and his pals once, and only then to see if his theories about them would prove true, but at the time it had been the most terrifying experience in his life.

It had been the last full moon of his sixth year— the only chance he'd had, as it happened, since he'd only managed to transform at will a week before.

To his own surprise, it wasn't Lupin's howls that had scared him; he'd grown up with Bella, and he already knew that there were much scarier things in the world than werewolves, after all. It wasn't a fear of being caught, either. It was the feel of the whole situation as he jumped from tree limb to tree limb, navigating by the narrow slits of moonlight that cut through the Forbidden Forest's ancient canopy and by the barking of Sirius and the werewolf. It was the sense of foreboding he felt every time his paw slipped on damp moss and he found himself scrabbling at the bark to keep from slipping off entirely.

Regulus had never been one for the cloak-and-dagger politics of his class— he certainly wasn't one for making deals in the afternoon sun, either, but a quiet and inconspicious corner had always been good enough for him— and that night in the Forest had felt far too much like them.

Still, he'd wanted to know for sure, and even though he knew he'd never have the nerve to confront his brother about it, he'd scampered on after the foursome until he was looking down from the branches of the tree James Potter's antlers were brushing up against. It was late spring, and in the tradition of deer everywhere, he had been trying to rub the velvet off of them, making irritable noises in the back of his throat as Sirius, who had just pinned the werewolf, looked on and sniggered in the back of his canine throat.

That had been the one moment that wasn't frightening, watching the two of them be Sirius and Potter even in strange shapes.

Regulus shook his head and returned to the present when he winded himself on a branch his back legs missed and paused to get his breath back, wondering absently if he and Sirius had looked nearly as funny when they were on the road the previous summer as James Potter had that night. Perhaps he ought to share that image with Harry; goodness knew that while he'd gone to school with James, he didn't know very many stories that didn't reveal how little he'd liked the man.

As he took off again, however, his thoughts turned a little more morbid than that night in the Forest. After all, aside from their height and age these trees were no different from all the rest in Britain, and as a Death Eater— an identity that was never far from his mind, these days— he'd spent a fair amount of time hiding in them when it all became too much.

Bellatrix herself had rarely noticed when he disappeared— she'd been too drunk on the power rush she got from killing— and although Rodolphus or Lucius might have, they usually kept quiet about it. Rodolphus knew that killing for sport disgusted him, and Lucius knew that Narcissa wouldn't be happy if Regulus was punished for disappearing briefly.

Still, crouching in the canopy of a tree, smelling blood or watching a clearing or yard light up with a green flash hadn't been any better than watching Bella kill in person. She was threatening to kill Sirius before he finally decided that he couldn't just sit and watch it happen anymore.

The scents of lizard and people reached his nose, and the sound of a crowd drifted through the trees, once again calling Regulus back to the present. This time it was more than welcome. After a moment he saw the stands, and the black form crouching underneath them. Shaking his head, he leapt down from the branches and bounded over to his brother.

While still a dog, Sirius's look managed to say exactly what he was thinking— _What took you so long?_

Regulus felt the fur on the back of his neck rising in mock indignance and in a show of maturity stuck out his tongue.

Sirius's tail wagged once and the two of them crawled under the seats until they found a place they were well-hidden by the stands but could still see everything going on in the arena, and lay down to wait until the task began.

* * *

Cedric Diggory, the other Hogwarts Champion, was the first to come into the arena. His first spell was a nifty bit of Transfiguration, turning a large stone into a black Labrador. The dog looked around, puzzled at its existence, for a few minutes, and then started towards Sirius and Regulus, sniffing the air curiously as if it was surprised to smell one of its own kind. The dragon's eyes followed it, little spurts of flame coming from its mouth and barely missing the animal. Fortunately for the dog's sake, it felt more curious than threatened.

Fortunately for Diggory's, it wasn't paying him any mind until the last few seconds, when the dog had stuck it's nose behind the stand and into Sirius's face. Sirius just growled at it, but Regulus was able to see the dragon's head snap back to see a human reaching into its nest, and the spurt of flame as the boy shied— still burned, but not as badly— grabbed the egg, and ran for it.

The girl from Beauxbatons— Fleur Delacour, the paper had said her name was— came second. She tried to put her dragon to sleep or something of the sort. At any rate, the dragon's eyes drooped and it didn't respond as she stepped closer. Unfortunately, it also began to snore, shooting out jets of flame as it exhaled, and the first caught her skirt.

The third Champion was Viktor Krum, who Regulus recognized from international Quidditch even if Sirius didn't. He did what Regulus had been expecting someone to do all along— hit his dragon with a Conjunctivitus Charm in the eyes. Unfortunately, as it writhed in agony it crushed a few of its own eggs and nearly squashed Krum as he stole the gold one.

There was only one champion left, and it was the one they'd come to fret over. Regulus glanced over at Sirius, hoping to catch his eye, but his brother's gaze was focused entirely on the dragon they were bringing in. Regulus recognized it dimly from a Care of Magical Creatures textbook— a Hungarian Horntail.

Then, Harry walked into the arena. He seemed suddenly a lot smaller and younger than the other champions, and the dragon seemed to be the nastiest one yet.

The boy raised his wand and shouted, "_Accio broom_!"

Regulus, puzzled, watched with everyone else as the Horntail watched Harry, who certainly wasn't going to do anything until that broomstick arrived. _Can you even summon something from that far away?_ Regulus couldn't help but think. He'd never tried.

After what seemed like an eternity, however, the broomstick came flying from Hogwarts and Harry caught it and mounted it.

Regulus realized he was breathing again for the first time since the boy had taken center stage.

Regulus wasn't a big Quidditch fan, mostly he watched for a conversational topic, and so he couldn't have said what moves Harry was moving as he swooped around the dragon, dodging both the flames and the barbs on his tail. He could feel Sirius shaking with nerves beside him— and growling in the back of his throat when the tail grazed its target. The dragon wasn't going to be obliging and lift off. That was the point of the swooping, after all; Harry wasn't daft enough to try to fly underneath a dragon.

Another eternity passed before the dragon's wings, already spread and flapping slowly, were allowed to lift it off the ground, so Harry could dive in and grab the golden egg.

Professor McGonagall, Alastor Moody, and Hagrid all converged on Harry as he landed. The real danger— the dragon— was dealt with, and they'd take care of the damage, so Regulus lunged forward and tugged his brother by the scruff of the neck. For the first time since the task began, Sirius looked at his brother.

Regulus nodded pointedly towards the Forest.

Sirius hesitated and glanced back towards Harry, who was on his way to the hospital tent. He seemed to realize that he'd done all he could— watch— turned back, and nodded.

The two of them got to their feet and slipped quietly back into the forest.

* * *

"Not what I expected," Regulus admitted when they'd gotten back into the cave. "Not what you expected either, was it?"

"I certainly wasn't going to suggest he use his broomstick," Sirius admitted as he patted Buckbeak. The hippogriff was lounging royally against the wall but obviously pleased to get the first shred of attention he'd gotten all that day. "But you've got to admit it worked, and better than the Confundus Charm the Durmstrang Champion used. That was what I would have suggested."

"Yeah, I thought you were going to."

Sirius grinned. "But whoever's trying to do the boy in can't be feeling too happy, now. He barely got scratched!"

Regulus sighed. "Yeah, but this is only round one. I don't know that the conspirators would have liked him hurt in round one— boost his confidence and get his guard down, and all that."

Sirius glowered at him. "Couldn't you have given me a couple of days of relief before pointing that out?"

"The best you'd've had was five minutes, Sirius, admit it," Regulus told him. "By then you'd have rained on your own parade."

Sirius's glare dropped to the ground for a moment, and he looked up at his brother with a slightly more sheepish look. "I guess you're right. At least the second task won't be until after Christmas, though."

**

* * *

Author's Note:** Somehow, whenever I read that scene in the books— and the circular set design for the movie didn't help— I'm reminded of fights with lions the Roman Colosseum and wonder how on earth we find people getting hurt _entertaining_. Still, that's one task down— two more to go. On reviews: Thanks to LastoftheSummerWine for the grammar correction and everyone else for the encouragement. I really appreciate every bit of it! Cheers! — Loki


	7. Conversations with Severus

It was getting worse.

Sirius was snoring peacefully and Buckbeak was, if not asleep, at least lying quietly in his usual corner, leaving Regulus alone with his thoughts, most of which persisted in heading down a worrying, circular, and inconclusive trail.

Harry's name coming out of the Goblet of Fire was, of course, the most worrying of all the recent developments, and for the past month it had pushed the re-formation of the Dark Mark out of his mind. Still, in the two weeks since the first task, the identity of whoever had rigged the goblet had been pushed to the back-burner itself; even Sirius, while still concerned, was less urgent about it than he had been two weeks previously. Without his brother's constant fretting draining his patience and energy, Regulus's mind had drifted back to his own vague forebodings.

Against his better judgement, he'd taken off his jacket to examine his left arm for the first time in six weeks. Previously, he'd been able to recognize the blots of the Mark because he'd known what they should look like; now he was all but certain anyone in the wizarding world could recognize the skull and snake.

"I ought to let Sirius know," he murmured, running his finger across the blurry jawbone of the skull. At the same time as he said it, however, he knew he wouldn't do so— not with the way Sirius was worrying over Harry. He didn't need to be worrying over Regulus as well.

Still, he wanted to talk to _someone_.

He checked his watch and found that it was only ten o'clock. He and Sirius were trying not to draw any attention to the cave, which included using as little artificial light as possible, and _that_ meant early evenings and, to Regulus's disgust, early mornings as well. The only reason the temperature of the cave was bearable at all was the warming charm Regulus had cast on the walls, and even then he or Sirius occasionally woke up shivering in the middle of the night and renewed it.

If it was only ten, he had nearly an hour before it was too late to meet anybody.

Regulus pulled his jacket back on and took his wand out of his pocket, deciding to damn the attention he might attract walking through Hogsmeade in Muggle clothes simply because it was faster than navigating the Forest this late at night.

In the end, he took to the woods at the train station because he still wasn't terribly keen on being out in the open. It was probably much easier to get into Hogwarts towards the back of the school, anyway— the doors were rarely locked for fear of shutting adventurous teenagers out of the building, and Sirius had been able to get in twice last year.

"Not now," a nearby voice snapped.

Regulus, who was nearly onto the school grounds, froze at the sound of the familiar voice.

"Then when, Severus? You have been avoiding me for weeks, but assuredly you must have noticed—"

"Yes, as a matter of fact, I have noticed. I have also had the presence of mind not to panic and race to the first person who might have any idea whatsoever of what I was talking about. Perhaps that was because I had no desire to deal with your insipid whinging about it."

"Assuredly it is of _some_ concern—"

"Of course it's of concern, Igor," Snape snapped. "I just cannot fathom why you think a long discussion about it with me would accomplish anything, or even ease your mind."

There were a few moments of silence in which Igor Karkaroff failed to think up an appropriate response.

"There you are," Snape told him. "Now, I am going to bid you good night before I have to go brew myself more Calming Draft— or better yet, prepare you a poison."

After another moment of silence one pair of feet stalked off, and Regulus had a pretty good idea whose they were. He stepped into the clearing and leaned casually against the nearest tree. "A bit late to be out walking, isn't it, Severus?"

Snape turned around quickly, pulling his wand out of his robes as he did so. He relaxed slightly when he saw Regulus, however. "You?"

"Yes. The delusional amnesiac who has been convinced he's Regulus Black."

"On deeper reflection I realized that you remembered far too much about the Death Eaters for someone as thoughtless as Black to have filled you in, even if he had been one," Snape admitted.

Regulus raised an eyebrow.

"And I don't think you would defend him had he not been innocent on that particular charge," Snape admitted. "Dare I ask what you're doing here?"

Regulus sighed theatrically. "Do you honestly think _Sirius Black_ was going to stay on the opposite side of the channel when his godson is in danger? And do you honestly think I am going to let my brother walk into a dementor's clutches because he's just that reckless?"

"I wish you would." Snape answered, straight-faced.

"I'm glad to see your wit hasn't dulled," Regulus said dryly. "Although, you told me that when you threatened to poison Karkaroff, didn't you?"

"I assure, you, I wasn't joking about _that_," Snape answered. "If he knows me at all he should be testing his drink for the remainder of the year. And you still haven't explained what you're doing in the Forbidden Forest in the middle of the night."

"I was hoping to talk to you. Apparently Karkaroff beat me to it. I had no idea the two of you knew each other so well."

"And why on earth did you want to talk to me?" Snape asked, raising an eyebrow.

Regulus shrugged. "Probably in order to discuss the same thing that you just dismissed Karkaroff for trying to talk about," he admitted. "Still, either I'm more paranoid than he is or I'm just cold out here, because I'd rather do it in an empty classroom than the woods. Do you mind?"

"On principle, no," Snape admitted, "but I fail to see how you could possibly get into my office without being seen by a student."

"Have you forgotten we're wizards, Severus? Disillusionment is an option. Now, could you lead the way? Please? It's December and I'm practically turning blue."

Snape rolled his eyes and cast the spell before Regulus had the chance to raise his wand. Then he turned around and stalked across the grounds and into the castle. Regulus followed him through the halls, which were familiar in spite of not having stepped foot in them in fifteen years, through the potions classroom, and into Snape's office. "Well?" Snape demanded, retreating behind his desk.

Regulus removed the spell, looking around the grey walls at the pickling creatures and large bookshelves with an expression of friendly curiosity he knew would drive Snape up the wall. "Well, I was going to say that the place hasn't changed much since we were students," he observed. "But the difference in this room is phenomenal."

"I believe that the last time you were here this was Slughorn's office, since I took this position about the time that you faked your death?" Snape asked.

"Well, all right. And there's no way that you and Horace Slughorn have the same style," Regulus admitted. "There seem to be more students around than usual, too— the term let out yesterday, didn't it?"

"They are all older students, and they are here not to study for their exams— which would greatly behoove most of them— but for a rather ridiculous Triwizard tradition called the Yule Ball. I take it that it hasn't made the papers yet? That Skeeter woman is probably waiting to find out who all the Champions are dating or some such idiocy, then." He rubbed his temples. "I do need a Calming Draft," he muttered. "So what about the Mark?"

"Well, my first question was answered during your discussion with Karkaroff— it's not just my paranoia getting to me."

"No, it's not. I still fail to see what you both are fussing about. It's only a tasteless tattoo."

Regulus's eyes narrowed and he leaned against the desk. "We both know it's not _'only'_ a tasteless tattoo, Severus," he snapped. "It's his mark, and it's a brand. Like Muggles do with _cattle_."

Snape sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Regulus . . . you're worse than Karkaroff."

"Am I?"

"Yes, even though you're not going to whine like he was. You don't want reassurances that I can simply dismiss, and you're not going to be dismissed until I give you answers."

"At least we understand each other. Have you told Dumbledore about it?"

Snape looked at him as if he had just asked him if magic worked. "_Yes_," he growled.

"Good. I figured you would, so I did you the favor of not trying to do your job for you," Regulus answered. He looked over to the shelf and found himself gazing into a sickly-green jar containing what looked like a pickled rodent, not really wanting to look at Snape as he asked the next question. "I'm sure Karkaroff's practically wetting his pants with fright and you're a fool if you're not concerned."

"I never told him I wasn't concerned. I told him I saw no reason to go running, panicking, to me about it," Snape answered quietly.

"What are you going to do if the Dark Lord comes back, Severus?" Regulus asked in nearly a whisper, raising a hand to his glasses.

There was a somewhat lengthy pause. "The same thing you will," Snape replied finally. "What I have to do."

"You're wrong there," Regulus replied, looking back at him. "I've got too much at stake on this side of the Channel to flee the country again. For better or worse I'm sticking it out here."

Snape sighed. "Narcissa was right, then."

Regulus raised an eyebrow. "Cissy was right about what?"

"About fifteen years ago your cousin had a rather interesting conversation with me in Diagon Alley, in which she informed me that she was afraid you had too much of your brother in you for your own good," Snape replied. "I see she was right."

"Maybe that's not such a bad thing," Regulus answered quietly.

"Perhaps not if you're suicidal," Snape retorted. "As you proved yourself to be about three weeks after that conversation."

"If my conjecture's right, you're only marginally less suicidal in that respect," Regulus reminded him. He pushed up his sleeve to look at the Mark and glanced back up at Snape, who was staring at him with a fathomless expression. "I'm not asking you to answer that."

"Good. There is nothing on this earth that could convince me to do so." Snape sighed again. "Is that all you wanted, Regulus?"

"Well, I hardly see the point in standing around exchanging pleasantries in your office at eleven o'clock at night," he answered with a shrug. "And the last thing I want is to come back to find Sirius waiting for an explanation."

Snape shrugged and picked up a stack of papers on his desk. "If you haven't told him about it by now, I don't suppose you would," he answered absently. "Good night."

* * *

Regulus slipped as quietly as he could back into the cave to find Buckbeak awake and glowering at Sirius, who was muttering in his sleep. James and Lily Potter seemed to feature heavily in the monologue, so Regulus knelt down beside his brother and shook him lightly. "Sirius . . . Sirius. . . ."

"Wha'? I . . . oh, g'mornin', Reggie."

"It's fifteen past eleven at night, actually."

"Oh. I thought I hadn't opened my eyes," Sirius mumbled, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. "What'd you wake me up about?"

"You wake me up whenever I'm talking in my sleep and I mention Bella's name," Regulus reminded him with a shrug. "I thought I might do you the same favor when you're moaning about the Potters."

"Oh, yeah. . . ."

"Are you all right? I don't know that this's ever happened before."

"It happened a lot in France, actually," Sirius replied, shrugging. "I didn't have anything else to chew on and . . . I guess I haven't gotten Azkaban out of my system yet. You're just usually asleep before I am."

Regulus nodded— Sirius was both a night owl and a morning person, so he seemed to get by on very little sleep. This was probably exactly why he didn't sleep much. "I would've thought . . . with the Triwizard Tournament and all, that you would have plenty on your mind without it drifting back to the eighties."

Sirius shrugged. "The second task isn't until February. I've got time to fret about other things."

"Yeah. . . ." Regulus glanced down at his arm, wondering if he ought to tell Sirius about it now, if having that to worry about might keep him from torturing himself about the past.

_No,_ he decided. _Better to keep him busy than add this to Harry when February approaches_.

"Sirius, I. . . ."

"Don't worry about me, Reg," Sirius informed him with a yawn. "I'll just see what I can do to tire myself out past nightmares tomorrow."

**

* * *

Author's Note:** Snape . . . I'm always nervous when I write him, because he's hard to keep in character, especially when you consider how likely he is to divulge his loyalties to anyone. . . . So did I get him right? Anyway, thanks to Gwinna and krenya-alenak for pointing out the mistakes in the last chapter; they have now been fixed. Snapesmistress-in-law: I'm eighty percent sure that Sirius referring to Harry as "the boy" is canonical in OotP, but I haven't actually checked to make sure, and to say the least Sirius's mind works in strange ways; it probably never occured to him to put Regulus and Snape in the same category. Also, thank you to everyone else who reviewed, I really appreciate it! Cheers! — Loki


	8. News

The rest of December passed without much incident— Regulus went out of his way to keep the both of them too busy for Sirius's nightmares or his own dwellings on the Dark Mark partially to make sure the rest of the year _wasn't_ uneventful. Sirius had probably noticed the increased sense of not always useful activity and decided not to mention it, and Buckbeak had certainly noticed the change. The hippogriff had taken to cawing desolately whenever the two of them left the cave with him tethered by himself. Regulus supposed that horses _were_ herd animals, and in that sense hippogriffs were equine rather than eagle-like.

Fortunately one of the most notable events in December was the letter from Harry, who didn't know that the two had been lurking behind the stands at the First Task and so described his broomstick maneuvers in extravagant detail.

"He sounds like his father," Regulus commented mildly as he handed the letter back to his brother.

Sirius raised an eyebrow. "I thought you always claimed your clearest memory of James Potter was that time in your first year when he and Peter ganged up on you and pushed you into the lake."

"It was in March, Sirius, and it was _freezing_. Of course I remember every detail of that," Regulus told him, rolling his eyes. "But my memory for everything else isn't awful, and I can remember him and Evans arguing about his Quidditch obsession before or after prefect meetings in your seventh year. She had a tendency to complain that he turned into a poet only when there was a broomstick involved and around Valentine's Day had written her a poem in which he compared finally going out with her with catching the snitch."

Sirius grinned. "I remember the poem. Remus told him not to send it."

"That's because Remus Lupin always had more sense than the both of you two put together," Regulus muttered. He leaned back against the cave wall. "Now, while we're on the subject of Harry, what are you planning to do for Christmas in the absence of Crookshanks or an owl? I'm still not risking Hogsmeade, the community's too small and close to the school, but since someone spotted you in France— _idiot_— the security in Britain's been taken down a little and I can probably get in and out of Diagon Alley without being recognized as a Black."

"Has there actually been a Hogsmeade trip yet this year?" Sirius asked absently after he came back with a mouthful of _Daily Prophets_ one day in January.

"Mmm?" Regulus mumbled, looking up from where he'd been lavishing attention on Buckbeak. The hippogriff's orange eyes had been boring into his shoulder blades all afternoon and he'd decided that the only way he was going to get any peace would be to give the bird what he wanted. "Well, if there have been we've missed them."

"Obviously." Sirius picked up one of the papers he'd dropped when he transformed and began leafing through it. "But seriously, how many does Hogwarts usually have during the first term?"

"If it hasn't changed since the seventies, two," Regulus answered. "One around Halloween and one right before the Christmas holidays."

"Exactly. We didn't see anyone around Halloween and the only couple I've seen this winter had obviously snuck out for a romp in the moonlight," Sirius announced. "I scared the life of them when I came out of the trees— a big black, shaggy thing, they must've thought I was Snape or something. Anyway, I wonder why they haven't had any this year."

"Well, Halloween was when the students from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang arrived, and at the risk of sounding sexist, most of the girls would probably have stayed in the bathroom trying to look nice and why would the boys go without the females?" Regulus asked, leaning over Buckbeak's back. "As for December . . . well, there was the Yule Ball."

"The what?" Sirius asked, looking up from the news.

"The Yule Ball," Regulus repeated. "Wasn't it in the papers late last year?"

"No."

"Oh. I guess I remember reading something about it in the Triwizard discussion in a book on Durmstrang or Hogwarts or something," Regulus invented. There was no way he was going to admit to Sirius that's he'd gone to talk to Snape, no way he was going to let his brother know something was worrying him that badly. Besides, he probably _had_ read about it in the past.

"Why would you be reading something about Durmstrang?" Sirius asked absently, putting down the first of the papers and picking up the second.

"Well, our parents _did_ think about sending us there. I can't say I wasn't curious about the place."

"No, only Mum wanted to send us to Durmstrang," Sirius answered, and a bitter edge was back in his voice, as usual when discussing their family. "She thought it might reform me, and since she blames Hogwarts for Andromeda's attitude towards Muggle-borns and had always considered Meda the entirely proper one before she went to school, she might as well send you to Bulgaria, too, so it didn't corrupt you. But Dad thought for about five minutes about the risks and logistics of sending two teenagers— especially since one of them was me— overseas and put his foot down for the first and only time in their marriage."

Regulus sighed heavily. "Sirius, you knew Mum and Dad for sixteen years out of a thirty year marriage," he pointed out. "I for nineteen. I doubt either of us can really judge how often Dad stood up to Mum."

"Well, if he'd done it more often he could've been a decent man," Sirius muttered.

"He was. Just not in your way."

Sirius glowered at his brother for a minute before looking back down at the paper and turning the page, at which the look of exasperation became a grimace. "Looks like Rita Skeeter finally got tired of embarrassing Harry with her stories and went after Hagrid," he mumbled. "And she's not looking to _embarrass_ Hagrid."

Regulus— who knew enough about the way the _Daily Prophet_ had worked in the past four or five years to thoroughly detest Rita Skeeter— looked up sympathetically from the feathers he'd been scratching on the hippogriff's neck. "Any of it libel?" he asked.

"Unfortunately from what I know of Hagrid, it's just very one-sided truth."

"I guess it was too much to ask that Skeeter'd slip up." Regulus shook his head and stepped out from behind Buckbeak. "And I don't think that people will see her name on a nasty article and think that she's just trying to stir up trouble, either," he added.

He held out a hand for the paper and Sirius handed it over. "I've met giants," he muttered after a moment or two of scanning it. "Breeding new species, even half fire-crabs, would be a great improvement. And the worst thing," he added, ripping the article in half, "is that this isn't even the worst thing I've seen Skeeter do to someone."

_

* * *

_

Dear Sirius and Regulus,

_You've told me to keep you posted on anything weird happening around here, and a couple of strange things happened last night._

_I was out under the invisibility cloak, and as I was headed back to the common room, I saw on the map that Mr. Crouch was looking through Snape's office. I wasn't paying attention to where I was going because of that, and my foot fell through one of the fake steps on the staircase I was climbing and the egg— that's the clue for the next task of the Triwizard Tournament; I was working on it— fell down the steps and opened. It wails when it opens and of course that brought Filch running in with Mrs. Norris. He thought Peeves had stolen it from me or Cedric Diggory._

_The wailing brought Snape up, too, and he told Filch that someone had been stealing from his store of Potion's ingredients and he wanted Filch to forget about Peeves ad come help him look for the thief. As they were arguing Moody came down the steps. He can see through invisibility cloaks, so he knew I was there, but he didn't mention me. Filch told him how they'd found the egg and that Snape was concerned because someone had broken into his office. Snape tried to stop him from telling Moody someone had broken in. Moody wanted to know what someone would break into the office for and Snape said to steal Potion ingredients. Moody asked him if there was anything else, but Snape said that Moody had already searched his office and knew he had nothing to hide._

_Then Moody saw the Marauder's map, which had fallen out of my reach when I fell through the step, and he told Snape he'd dropped something. I managed to tell Moody it was mine and he didn't let Snape pick it up, but Snape knew I was out and told Moody and Filch I was. Then Moody managed to get Snape to back to his office and make Filch give him the egg._

_After that he asked me if I knew who had broken into Snape's office. I told him it was Mr. Crouch, and he asked me if he could borrow the map. I figured I owed him a favor, so I said yes._

_One of the things I don't understand, though, is why Mr. Crouch would be sneaking around Snape's office in the first place. Moody told me his obsession with Dark wizards is nothing to Mr. Crouch's, but Mr. Crouch has apparently been ill— Ron's brother Percy, who's Crouch's personal assistant, came to the Yule Ball instead of him._

_Anyway, I thought you might like to know._

_—Harry_

Regulus read the letter a second time and looked up at Sirius with a shrug. "I can't make any more sense of it than the kid can," he announced. "I mean, I understand why Crouch and Moody might suspect Snape— but I don't think it's him to put Harry's name in the goblet, Sirius, so don't you even _start_—"

"I wasn't. There's got to be a reason Dumbledore trusts him, even if I don't," Sirius snapped. "Snape's not going to do something like that right under the headmaster's nose."

"Good," Regulus muttered. He looked back down at the letter. "I don't understand why Crouch is getting up to his office in the middle of the night, though— from what I know of him, he doesn't strike me as someone who would go outside the letter of the law."

"He has," Sirius said, in the same bitter voice he'd used discussing their parents. "But not like that. And why would he send Percy Weasley to the Yule Ball if he suspected Snape?"

"Because he really was ill but is recovering right now?" Regulus suggested.

"Can't see it," Sirius answered, shaking his head.

"Why are you so sure?" Regulus asked.

"I know Crouch. He was the top of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement when I went to prison, remember?" Sirius asked.

"Oh, yeah, and aren't they supposed to question you under veritiserum if you ask for it?" Regulus muttered. "Well, Filch and Snape and Moody are predictable," he added, shaking his head. "It's Crouch that bothers me. And on that end, he raises more questions that either you or I have answers, doesn't he?"

"Yeah." Sirius tapped the letter a few times and then tore the bottom off and dug through his pockets for a pen. "I think it's high time we talked this out in person. That's so much easier than through letters." He put the paper against the side of the cave and hesitated a moment before adding, "There's got to be a Hogsmeade trip _sometime_ this year," scribbling something down on the paper, and tying it to the leg of the little owl that had brought Harry's missive.

**

* * *

Author's Note:** This chapter fails quite spectacularly to excite me, but some of it had to get done. Anyway, I'm glad everyone thinks I got Snape right; aside from Harry and Dumbledore, he's the most difficult character for me to write, and there are a lot of Snape fans aboard this fic, which just makes me more nervous when he comes into play. Well, the Second Task is up next (obviously). Thanks to everyone for the encouraging reviews last chapter! Cheers! -- Loki


	9. The Second Task

Sirius did not bother waking Regulus up at dawn on February Twenty-Second, and when Regulus finally did open his eyes— still shaking off vague forebodings about the Mark that persisted in his dreams and much later than Sirius usually let him sleep— Sirius was nowhere to be found. He glanced over at Buckbeak, who had been known to stare desolately after one of them for as much as an hour after they disappeared, but the hippogriff was busily preening his feathers and didn't seem to notice Sirius's absence. He had probably been gone awhile, then.

"If he didn't leave a note. . . ." Regulus mumbled, fading off less for the ominous effect than because he couldn't think of anything suitably nasty to do if Sirius hadn't left one.

A quick search of the cave proved that he didn't have to expand on his imagination. Sirius had scrawled and circled a note in the margin of one of the more recent _Daily Prophets_:

__

Can't sleep anymore, gone hunting. In the likely event that I don't catch anything and drag it back here, meet me by the school gates at noon.

Grumbling, Regulus checked his watch— it was eleven-thirty, so he could make it if he hurried. "C'mon, Sirius, you had to _know_ I'd sleep too late if you let me," he muttered. But at least Sirius had decided to distract himself this time, which was definitely a step in the right direction.

Regulus glanced behind him at Buckbeak, who seemed to find him more interesting at the moment than he did his feather's. When Regulus took fox form, the hippogriff let out a desolate caw, as if he were being permanently abandoned.

Unable to snap something at Buckbeak, the fox made a grumbling sound in the back of his throat and rolled his eyes before scampering out of the cave and beginning the trek down the mountain towards the village and Hogwarts.

* * *

Sirius was already waiting for his brother by the time Regulus got to the gates. He raised a brow and woofed when he saw Regulus coming, as if to ask where he'd been.

Still irritated, Regulus felt the fur on the back of his neck rising and bared his teeth in reply.

Sirius's lips also parted to reveal his fangs, but Regulus knew his brother well enough to know he wasn't annoyed by Regulus's rotten mood. Far from it, in fact— he was smirking.

Regulus growled.

Sirius's tail wagged once and he started to trot into the Forbidden Forest. Regulus rushed after him at a near sprint to keep up. The only problem with traveling this way was that he couldn't give Sirius a piece of his mind right now, as much as he wanted to.

The two of them took a wide berth around the school to avoid both the walls and arriving with enough time for Sirius to start _really_ fretting. By the time Regulus could smell the lake on the wind, Sirius transformed back into a man. "Erm . . . Reggie?" he asked.

Regulus transformed himself and raised his eyebrows above his glasses. "What did you do now, Sirius?" he demanded.

"Nothing. I just wondered if you knew where they were holding the second task, because I don't."

"You're the one that finds it important to be there, despite the fact that there's nothing we could do even if something happened," Regulus pointed out. "I thought you'd figure it out yourself."

Sirius sighed. "_Reggie_. . . ."

"All right, I guess it's a school event and wouldn't have been made as public as it could have been. Dumbledore doesn't want the place swarming with reporters, after all." He glanced up at the nearest tree. "If I climb one of these things I can probably see where it is," he muttered. "It's not as if it's going to be a _small_ affair, after all."

It was Sirius's turn to raise his brows. "If you're afraid of heights, Reg—"

"I've told you before that I'm not scared if there's something solid between me and the fall, and it's not as if I'm going to climb high enough that the branches are really swaying." He smiled slightly. "Chasing helter-skelter after you is probably going to shave more years off my life due to stress than a few minutes swaying in the branches."

Sirius shrugged. "I'm going to remind you that it was _your_ idea when you come down cursing," he said.

Regulus transformed once again and hopped from branch to branch, steadily making his way up. Gray foxes had been built for this, and even when the branches did start to sway a little— it was a windy day— something about the shape he was in kept him from getting too nervous. He was nearly seventy-five feet in the air by the time he could see over enough trees to see the stands that had been conjured beside the Black Lake.

He descended rather more slowly that he had climbed, dropped the last six feet, and turned back into a man. "By the lake," he told Sirius. "And we've got"— he checked his watch— "about forty minutes, so if it's all the same to you I'd rather I _not_ have to chase you down there and shave a few more years off my life."

Sirius grinned. "All right."

Because Regulus insisted, occasionally by growling and yipping, on traveling at his stubby-legged pace rather than Sirius's long strides, the two reached the shore and found an inconspicuous place to settle down as Harry sprinted, late, to where the other three champions stood.

Ludo Bagman— a man Regulus faintly recognized from his career as a Quidditch beater— gave Harry a few minutes to catch his breath before he stood and magically amplified his voice. "Well, all our champions are ready for the second task, which will start with my whistle. They have precisely one hour to recover whatever has been taken from them. On the count of three, then. One . . . two . . . _three_!"

The four champions waded quickly into the water. The three older ones disappeared very quickly, flicking their wands right before diving into the water, but for a few minutes Harry stood there as if spellbound. He didn't touch his wand, and after a few minutes Regulus could hear catcalls from the Slytherin section of the stands. He rolled his eyes, remembering how brutal his house could be when things didn't look favorable, and how idiotic they often looked when they started mocking people too soon. Sirius, however, tensed.

Harry reached up suddenly, clutching his neck, before plunging quickly into the water. Sirius was on his feet so quickly Regulus wondered how he got there. But before the dog could do anything stupid, his feet— now obviously webbed— kicked out of the water for a moment before he vanished under the lake. Sirius lay back down, and the Slytherins abruptly stopped catcalling.

Regulus smiled slightly— a human habit that looked downright deadly on a fox— as Sirius settled down beside him. It was gillyweed, then. He had to admit the kid was bright enough to hold his own, even if Snape would be furious about the stolen plant.

* * *

He wasn't back yet.

It had been nearly two hours, and Harry wasn't back yet. Fleur Delacour had returned first, Cedric Diggory had also returned, carrying another student, and Viktor Krum had just surfaced with Hermione Granger. Sirius was pacing and grumbling in the back of his canine throat, and even Regulus was starting to worry a little. How long did gillyweed last, anyway? Regulus hadn't the least idea, and he was half afraid he was going to find out in the wrong fashion.

Finally, just as Regulus was about to pounce on Sirius for the confounded pacing on the excuse it was sure to draw attention, three heads appeared from the deeps. One was a blonde girl, the second Ron Weasley's, and the third, a little behind the others, was Harry's.

Sirius yelped in surprise and relief and Regulus finally did pounce on his brother lest he start jumping. The two rolled on the ground for a few minutes, Regulus dodging Sirius's paws as the bigger dog tried to untangle himself from the heap he had landed in and avoiding Sirius's tail, which was wagging wildly.

By the time the two had both righted themselves, Bagman was awarding points. Regulus only half listened to the first three champions', which would be reported in the next day's paper, anyway, but he was curious to see what the verdict would be on Harry's.

"Harry Potter used gillyweed to great effect. He returned last, and well outside the time limit of an hour. However, the Merchiftainess informs us that Mr. Potter was first to reach the hostages, and that the delay in his return was due to his determination to return all the hostages to safety, not merely his own."

Regulus sighed dramatically and Sirius glared at him. At this Regulus only shot him the fanged grin of a fox. They didn't need language to tease each other about their houses, and this was _clearly_ a prime example of what Regulus would call Gryffindor stupidity.

"Most of the judges feel that this shows moral fiber and merits full marks. However . . . Mr. Potter's score is forty-five points."

Hogwarts cheered wildly, since both their champions were now tied for first place. Sirius's tail began to beat wildly again, knocking his brother in the side and Regulus, rolling his eyes dramatically, tugged his brother's ear. The two melted inconspicuously back into the Forbidden Forest.

* * *

"Moral fiber, eh?" Sirius asked as soon as they were far enough into the Forest to transform and talk.

"I dunno if I'd agree," Regulus answered lightly. "After all, he had to know they weren't in real danger. Dumbledore was involved in planning the thing, after all."

Sirius rolled his eyes.

"In the real world, yeah, that would've taken some nerve," Regulus conceded. "Kid just forgot the Tournament wasn't the real world."

"Heh." Sirius smiled slightly and shook his head. "So, at the risk of getting answers I don't like, what would you've done?"

"In the Tournament? That would've been the end of it for me," Regulus answered. "I'm even more afraid of drowning than I am of flying, to be honest, and nothing could induce me to get into that lake. I haven't even been able to get into a swimming pool since. . . ." He faded off and shook his head.

"Yes?" Sirius demanded.

Regulus shook his head. "I don't want to talk about it. Suffice to say it involved a lake and dead people."

"All right," Sirius murmured, shaking his head. "But, out of curiosity . . . who would it've been for you?"

"At the kid's age? You or Cissy," Regulus admitted. "Now? You're the only family I've got left, Sirius, and you know what I think of family."

Sirius nodded.

"So, at the risk of getting answers _I_ don't like, what would you've used?"

"Bubble-head charm, like the first two. _I_ am not afraid of water."

"I wouldn't blame you if you never wanted to get into it again, though. Azkaban's an island, after all, and the swim back here must've been awful."

"I dunno . . . it was like getting my mind back, finally being out of there," Sirius murmured. "Like finally being alive again. Besides," he added, grinning suddenly and clearly trying to lighten the mood. " Britain's an island, too. Azkaban hasn't stopped me from wanting to come here, now has it?"

Regulus rolled his eyes. "And who? Lupin or Harry? I know at Harry's age it'd've been James."

Sirius stared at his brother for a minute and shook his head. "Why did you rule yourself out?" he demanded after a long minute.

"I figured I was out of the running against the school friend you did something supremely illegal for and your godson," he answered.

"_Reggie_. . . ." Sirius shook his head. "Probably Harry," he admitted. "But I wouldn't count out _either_ you or Remus."

**

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****Author's Note: **The response to this story continues, frankly, to amaze me, which is one of the reasons I'm going to apologize, but I doubt I'll be updating next week. I have, among other commitments, a lot of school work to finish as the first quarter draws to a close, so I'll be taking a week's hiatus in order to simply get everything I need to get done done. Anyway— MercuryBlue144: I did actually catch the Austria/Albania thing halfway through chapter five, but since this AU, I decided that internal consistency was the more important. You've got a fair point about Durmstrang's location though; thanks for pointing it out. Thanks also to everyone who pointed out the minor errors in the last chapter, and of course, to everyone who just reviewed! Until the next update, Cheers! —Loki


	10. Bartemius Crouch

When Sirius and Regulus returned from the school, a brown-barred owl was waiting for them in the cave, perched on the farthest outcrop from Buckbeak, who was glaring disdainfully at it. The moment the two canines became human, it swooped down on them, hooting indignantly. Sirius laughed and let it perch on his arm. "Buckbeak a bit temperamental?" he asked.

"Looks like it," Regulus muttered, coming closer to the hippogriff. Buckbeak glared at him from one orange eye for a moment and Regulus tensed, ready to draw back if the bird was inclined to snap. After a moment, however, the hippogriff relaxed and let Regulus give him the attention Sirius was giving the frazzled owl.

"It's Harry's reply; the next Hogsmeade weekend's this one," Sirius announced.

"Good," Regulus said as Buckbeak shifted underneath his fingers. "The sooner you talk to the kid, the better you'll feel about it all."

"Yeah. I'm telling him to meet us at the stile at two," Sirius added, scribbling his reply. "And while I'm at it, I'm telling him to bring something to eat."

"That is possibly the best idea you've had all month," his brother informed him.

Hunting hadn't been good lately— all the excitement from the Triwizard Tournament and half a hundred more people up at Hogwarts had driven the game deeper and deeper into the Forbidden Forest, and hunting had become an ever more time-consuming task if one of the two didn't get lucky and pounce on one of the increasingly bright rats. Regulus didn't necessarily count this as a bad thing— what else did they have to do but fret?— but Sirius's only half-joking remark, that on the bright side they could be lunching on Peter, was about to drive him up the wall.

Sirius tied the note to the owl's leg and led it to the cave opening. With one final, angry glance at Buckbeak, the bird sprang off of Sirius's arm and starting winging it towards Hogwarts.

"What _did_ you do to it?" Sirius asked the hippogriff, sounding amused.

Buckbeak squawked in a self-satisfied manner.

"Somehow," Regulus announced dryly, "I'm glad we _can't_ speak hippogriff."

* * *

"Hello, Sirius," Harry greeted them in Hogsmeade on Saturday, "Regulus." He was flanked by Ron and Hermione and his smile seemed just a little bit forced. Regulus was reminded of the letter he'd sent to Sirius, telling him not to come back to Britain.

Sirius, however, didn't seem to notice. He sniffed the bag over Harry's shoulder, wagged his tail, and took off for the cave.

Regulus and the kids followed him at a much slower pace, thanks to their two legs and Regulus's stubby ones. It was surprisingly warm for February and Regulus found himself wishing that either Sirius wasn't in such a hurry or he'd begun to shed his winter coat by now. The kids panted just a little behind him, as Sirius practically bounded up the mountain and into the cave.

Once inside, they stopped to bow to Buckbeak, who seemed to consider his options for a moment before bowing back. Hermione raced forward to stroke the feathers on his neck and Harry turned to Sirius, who had just transformed.

"Chicken!" Sirius announced hoarsely.

Regulus, who had just transformed himself, chuckled. Harry opened his bag and handed Sirius a bundle wrapped in a napkin.

"Thanks," Sirius said, opening it up and tossing Regulus a drumstick. "We can't steal too much from the village, we'd draw attention to ourselves. Been living off rats, mostly."

"What are you doing here, Sirius?" Harry demanded.

"Fulfilling my duty as your appointed guardian," Sirius answered, starting on a drumstick himself. "Don't worry, Reg's keeping me out of trouble," he added with a grin.

Harry scowled.

"I want to be on the spot," Sirius told him more seriously. "Things're getting stranger and from the looks of the papers"— he gestured towards a pile of yellowing _Daily Prophets_— "we're not the only ones worrying."

Ron picked up the papers and started leafing through them. Harry's eyes, however, didn't waver from Sirius's face. "What if somebody catches you?" he asked. "What if you're seen?"

"I told you," Regulus informed him, "that I've got it. Not many people know he's an Animagus and if all else fails I'll _obliviate _the memory."

Harry still didn't look entirely convinced, but before he could say so Ron nudged his and passed him the paper. Harry scanned it as Regulus read the headline upside down— "Mysterious Illness of Bartemius Crouch."

"They're making it sound as if he's dying," Harry muttered, "but he got up to the school. . . ."

"My brother's Crouch's personal assistant," Ron told Sirius and Regulus. "He says it's overwork."

"Well, he _did_ look ill, the last time I saw him up close," Harry added, still scanning the second story Ron had handed him. "The night my name came out of the Goblet of Fire."

"Getting his comeuppance for sacking Winky, isn't he?" Hermione asked savagely. She was still stroking Buckbeak, who was crunching the chicken bones Regulus had just thrown him, but she glared at the cave at large. "I'll bet he regrets it now that she isn't there to look after him!"

Ron rolled his eyes. "Hermione's obsessed with house elves," he explained.

Sirius, however, looked up from a second piece of chicken in surprise. "Crouch sacked his house elf?" he asked, interested.

"Yeah, at the Quidditch world Cup," Harry answered, and launched into an explanation of what the _Prophet_ hadn't published about the Dark Mark. Sometime during the speech, Sirius got to is feet and started pacing.

"So . . . you first saw her at the Top Box, saving Crouch a seat?" he asked when Harry finished. "Just so I can get all the details straight."

"Right," the kids said together.

"But Crouch never turned up for the match?"

"He said he'd been too busy, I think," Harry replied.

Sirius continued pacing. Regulus, Buckbeak, and the kids all watched him in silence. After some time, Sirius asked, "Did you need to use your wand between the Top Box and the woods?"

Harry thought for a few minutes. "No . . . I don't think I checked my pockets until we were going through the woods. Are you saying whoever conjured the Dark Mark stole my wand in the Top Box?"

Sirius shrugged. "It's possible."

"Winky didn't steal that wand!" Hermione exclaimed.

"She wasn't the only one sitting behind you in the box," Sirius pointed out, and he started to pace again. "Who else was there?"

"Some Bulgarian ministers, Cornelius Fudge, the Malfoys—"

"The Malfoys!" Ron exclaimed, loudly enough that it echoed around the cave and Regulus made a move towards Buckbeak, who was tossing his head nervously. He relaxed when the hippogriff didn't seem inclined to snap at Hermione. "I'll bet it was Lucius Malfoy!"

"I find it more likely that Lucius was leading the head of the pack back at the camp," Regulus replied lightly. "Anyone else?"

"Ludo Bagman," Hermione supplied.

"I don't know anything about Bagman except he used to be a beater for the Wilbourne Wasps," Sirius admitted. "Reggie?"

Regulus shook his head. "Never exactly kept track of Quidditch player's careers."

"He's all right," Harry supplied. "He keeps offering to help me with the tasks."

Sirius's head snapped around to stare at his godson so quickly Regulus was surprised he didn't give himself whiplash. "Does he? Any idea why?"

Harry shrugged. "Says he's taken a liking to me."

"Hmm. . . ." Sirius said thoughtfully, rubbing his neck. "That's interesting."

"We saw Bagman in the woods just before the Dark Mark was cast," Hermione announced, pouncing on this latest possible explanation. "Didn't we?" she added pointedly to Harry and Ron.

"Come off it, Hermione," Ron snapped. "You're not trying to tell us _Bagman_ conjured the Ma—"

"I think it more likely he did it than Winky!"

Ron rolled his eyes and turned back to Sirius and Regulus. "Like I said, she's obsessed with—"

But Sirius held up a hand to stop him. "What did Crouch do after they found her under the Mark with Harry's wand?" he asked.

"Went to look in the bushes," Harry answered, "but no one else was there."

"Of course," Sirius muttered. "He'd want to lay the blame on anyone but his own elf. And then he sacked her?"

"Yes!" Hermione exclaimed, bristling with indignance for Winky's sake. "Just because she didn't stay behind and let herself get trampled—"

"Hermione, will you give it a rest with that elf?" Ron asked in exasperation.

"Actually . . . she's got Crouch's measure better than you," Sirius informed him thoughtfully. "If you want to see what a man's like, watch how he treats his inferiors, not his equals. Reggie could have done better to remember that, once upon a time." He glanced over at his brother, who smile sheepishly, and began pacing again. "I don't like these absences of Couch's . . . not showing up at the Top Box when the elf had saved him a seat, working so hard to reinstate the Triwizard Tournament and then not showing up to it, either. . . . And if Barty Crouch has ever taken off work for illness before, I'll eat Buckbeak."

"You know Crouch, then?" Harry asked.

"Sirius scowled, suddenly looking menacing enough that even Regulus drew back a little. "Oh, I know Crouch all right. He was the one that gave the order to send me to Azkaban— without a trial."

"_What_?" Ron and Hermione demanded simultaneously.

"You're kidding!" Harry exclaimed.

Regulus's own eyes widened. "Even I didn't know that," he said quietly.

Sirius gave his brother a funny look.

"I thought you really had done Pettigrew in at the time, Sirius," he pointed out. "You were angry enough to do it, certainly, and I don't think you could have wormed your way out of that one."

Sirius nodded and turned to the bewildered-looking kids. "Did you know Barty Crouch used to be the head of the Department for Magical Law Enforcement?"

They shook their heads.

"He was set up to be the next Minister of Magic," Sirius explained. "Powerful wizard— and power-hungry."

Harry opened his mouth, but Sirius shook his head. "No, never a Voldemort supporter. Crouch was always very outspoken against the Death Eaters. But a lot of Ministry people in those days. . . ." He shook his head again. "You're too young to understand. . . ."

"That's what my dad said at the World Cup," Ron said irritably. "Try us, why don't you?"

A grin flashed briefly across Sirius's face. "All right, I'll try you. Imagine Voldemort's powerful now. You don't know for sure who his supporters are—"

"—even if you're one of them," Regulus muttered.

"—you don't know who's working for him, and you know he can control people and make them do terrible things against their will. You're scared for yourself, your family, and your friends, and the Ministry's more or less useless . . . putting so much energy into trying to keep it all from coming to the Muggles' attention while meanwhile, Muggles are dying, too. Every week there are more deaths, more disappearances, more torturing . . . terror, confusion, panic everywhere. . . . That's how it used to be."

He shook his head and glanced over at Regulus again, as if expecting his brother to add something, but Regulus just shook his head and waved him on.

"Well, things like that can bring out the best in some people and the worst out of others. Crouch's intentions may have been good in the beginning, I wouldn't know. He rose through the Ministry quickly and started ordering harsher measures against the Death Eaters— giving Aurors powers to kill rather than capture, for instance. I wasn't the only one handed straight to the dementors. I'd call him a lot worse that Reggie probably ever was, but a lot of people thought he had the right handle on things at the time. After Voldemort fell, it seemed like only a matter of time until Crouch got the top job. But then"— he smile grimly— "Crouch's son was caught with a group of Death Eaters who'd wormed their way out of Azkaban."

Hermione's eyes widened. "His _son_ was caught?" she asked with a kind of fascinated horror.

"Yep." Sirius threw himself back down where he'd been sitting. He pulled a loaf of bread out of the bundle, ripped it in two, and tossed half to Regulus. "Bit of a nasty shock for Barty, I'd imagine. Should've taken off early from the office once in awhile, spent time with his family. Gotten to know his own son."

"_Was_ his son a Death Eater?" Harry asked.

"No idea," Sirius answered as he started to wolf down bread. "Ask Reggie."

"I don't know the name of every Death Eater, Sirius," Regulus informed him irritably. "Voldemort didn't like the liability."

"Well, then, I guess neither of us knows. I'd bet my life the people he were caught with were Death Eaters, but he could have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, like the elf."

"Did Crouch try to get his son off?" Hermione asked quietly.

Sirius laughed bitterly. "Crouch? Let his son off? I thought you had the measure of him, Hermione. No, his fatherly affection extended just far enough to actually give his son a trial, and from what I've heard, it wasn't much more than an excuse to show how much he hated the boy. _Then_ he sent him to Azkaban."

"Crouch handed his _son_ to the dementors?" Hermione asked, horrified.

"That's right," Sirius answered, and there was no trace of even bitter amusement left in his voice. "I was in Azkaban myself by the time they brought him in, watched them through the bars. He was, what, nineteen? A year younger than you were, Reggie?" Before Regulus could answer, he shook his head and continued, "They took him to a cell near mine. He was crying for his mother by nightfall, but he went quiet after a few weeks. They all did in the end, except when they shrieked in their sleep. . . ."

Regulus reached compulsively for his brother's shoulder, but Sirius clearly didn't want it and pulled out of his reach.

"Is he still in Azkaban?" Harry asked quietly.

"No . . . no," Sirius said in a dead voice. "He died about a year after they brought him in."

"He _died_?" Harry repeated.

Sirius shrugged. "Most go mad in there, and a lot of them stop eating in the end," he pointed out bitterly. "You loose your will to live. Crouch and his wife were allowed a deathbed visit since he was an important Ministry official. That's the last time I saw Barty Crouch, I think, half-carrying his wife past my cell. He never did pick up his son's body; they buried it outside. His wife died soon after, I think. Grief. Wasted away just like the boy."

He tossed the scant remainder of the bread to Buckbeak, who caught it in his beak with a snap. "So Crouch lost it all just when he thought he had it made. His son dead, his wife dead, and from the sound of it, a big drop in popularity. After the boy died people started to feel a little more sympathetic towards the son and asked themselves why a kid from a good family had been led so far astray. The consensus was that his father had never cared for him. So when the top job at the Ministry was up for grabs, Fudge got it and Crouch was shunted into the Department of International Magical Cooperation."

**

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Author's Note: **I'm back, and with a longer chapter than usual. This scene was originally going to be only one chapter, but it wound up ridiculously long when one considers my usual chapter length, and part of it worked better with the next chapter, anyway. Go figure. Anyway, now that I have recovered from the shock of recieving over a hundred reviews (thanks guys!), I shall reply to a few of them: Several people have asked by now if Regulus had any friends in school. The answer is yes, but since he's always been a bit of a paranoid loner (takes after his dad in that sense), close ones were few and far between, and to a man they're dead or in Azkaban now. As far as the second task goes, he's always, without exception, put his family first, which depending on the situation can be one of his greatest strengths or his greatest weakness. Anyway, thank you to everyone who took the time to review, as always I really apreciate it! Cheers! —Loki


	11. Coming Clean

There was a long silence following Sirius's statement. Regulus hesitated, his hand still outstretched between Sirius and himself, not sure how to react to his brother's monologue. He knew Sirius would rather he let it alone, and after a moment he let his hand drop and glanced back at the kids.

"Moody says Crouch is obsessed with catching Dark Wizards," Harry announced.

"Yeah, I've heard it's a bit of a mania with him," Sirius answered. "If you ask me, he thinks he can bring back the old popularity by catching just one more Death Eater."

"And he snuck up to the school to search Snape's office!" Ron exclaimed excitedly, glowering at Hermione. Clearly Snape's loyalties were an old argument.

"Yes, and that doesn't make any sense at all," Sirius answered. Regulus was impressed— once upon a time, Sirius would have thought the same way as Ron, twisting evidence to reach the conclusion about Snape he wanted to.

"Yes it does!" Ron exclaimed.

"No, listen, if Crouch wanted to investigate Snape he'd be coming to the Triwizard Tournament," Sirius pointed out. "It's an excuse to make regular visits to Hogwarts and keep an eye on him."

"So you think Snape might be up to something?" Harry asked eagerly.

"I don't care what he says," Hermione snapped, turning away from Buckbeak and putting her hands on her hips. "Dumbledore trusts Snape—"

"So do I," Regulus murmured.

"Thank you," Hermione told him. "And—"

"Come off it, Hermione," Ron began. "I know Dumbledore's brilliant and all, but that doesn't mean a really powerful Dark Wizard couldn't fool him—"

"Why'd he save Harry's life in first year, then?"

"I dunno, maybe he thought Dumbledore'd sack him or something. . . ."

This had all the signs of a very old argument, and as if to prove it, Harry looked over at Sirius and asked loudly, "What do you think, Sirius?"

Both Ron and Hermione shut their mouths and looked over.

"I think they've both got a point," Sirius answered, running his fingers distractedly through his hair. "Ever since I found out he was teaching, I've wondered why Dumbledore hired him. Snape was always fascinated by the Dark Arts; he was famous for it at school. Slimy, oily, greasy-haired kid he was," he added, a shade vindictively. Harry and Ron exchanged grins. "He knew more curses in first year than half the kids in seventh year, and he hung out with a gang of Slytherins who nearly all turned out to be Death Eaters." He glanced over that his brother. "Help me, Reg, you knew him better."

"That's because I was actually capable of holding a conversation with the man without someone's nose changing shape," Regulus observed.

"Yeah . . . erm, let's see." Sirius began counting off on his fingers. "Rosier and Wilkes— they were both killed by Aurors the year before Voldemort fell. All three Lestranges are in Azkaban, right?"

"I was sure Rabastan would worm his way out claiming he was just acting on his brother's orders rather than those of a Death Eater, but he didn't succeed," Regulus answered, nodding.

"Avery convinced the Ministry he was under the Imperius; Reggie was a part of that gang if he felt like having a social life that week . . . but as far as I know, Snape was never even accused of being a Death Eater," Sirius added, looking imploringly over at his brother.

"He was one," Regulus admitted. "He started acting funny— not so much that you'd notice if you didn't know him well— about the time I faked my death. I can't confirm this, but I think he went to Dumbledore about then."

Sirius nodded slowly.

"Snape knows Karkaroff pretty well," Ron announced, "but he wants to keep that quiet."

"No matter what side you're on, if you know Karkaroff you want to keep it quiet," Regulus muttered. "That snake burned everybody and he's still holding a box of matches."

"You should have seen Snape's face when Karkaroff showed up in Potions today!" Harry announced. "He wanted to talk, said Snape had been avoiding him. He showed Snape something on his arm that made them both nervous, but I couldn't see what it was."

"He showed Snape something on his arm?" Sirius repeated, thoroughly puzzled. He ran his fingers distractedly through his filthy black hair again. "Well, I have no idea what that's about. Reggie?"

Regulus sighed. He'd known it would come to this eventually and supposed he should be glad it had happened now, when Sirius probably wouldn't blow up in front of the kids. He wasn't going to be happy about finding this out seven months after Regulus had first noticed it, after all, but he was going to be even less pleased if Regulus lied to him now. In a way he'd been looking for something to force his hand, anyway. "Yeah, I know what it is." He hitched up his jacket sleeve to reveal the brand. "It was probably this."

Five pairs of eyes— Buckbeak seemed interested in everyone's center of attention— bored into Regulus's forearm. He could hear Hermione draw her breath in sharply and wondered if the kids had really registered the fact that he used to be a Death Eater before now.

"That's the Dark Mark," Sirius said unnecessarily after a moment.

"Yeah. He— the Dark Lord— branded it into all of out forearms," Regulus explained slowly. "It burned black to call us, when he was in power— and yes, he'd kill us if he didn't show up. It's how he knew I'd run. It faded after he disappeared; I used to pass it off as a kerosine burn, since by Muggle standards we really did grow up in an old-fashioned household. Now it's coming back, and it's probably got us _all_ scared out of our wits."

"How long has it been like this?" Sirius demanded.

"Since sometime during the summer," Regulus admitted with a grimace.

"No wonder you never take your coat off," Sirius muttered, shuddering a little. Then he scowled. "Why did you never tell me?"

"Sirius, you've got enough on your plate without me adding to it," Regulus answered, pulling his sleeve up over the Mark, although he could still feel their eyes on it. "A price on your head and your godson illicitly entered into the Triwizard Tournament against his will— what more do you need?"

"I still think you should've told me," Sirius growled, sounding suddenly more like the dog than the man. He shook his head, shot Regulus the "I'll deal with you later" look their mother had been so accomplished at shooting Sirius himself, and turned to the kids. "To be honest, I can't see Dumbledore letting Snape teach without rock-hard proof that he'd switched sides. Trust him, maybe, but not let him around children."

"Why're Moody and Crouch so eager to get into Snape's office, then?" Ron demanded.

"Well, Moody probably searched every single teacher's office when he got to Hogwarts," Sirius answered. "He takes Defense Against the Dark Arts seriously, and I'm not sure he trusts anyone at all— after everything he's seen it wouldn't surprise me. Crouch, on the other hand. . . ." He shook his head and looked up at Ron. "You said your brother's Crouch's personal assistant?" he asked. "Could you ask him if he's seen Crouch lately?"

"I can try," Ron muttered doubtfully. "Better not make it sound as if he's up to something, though. Percy's practically in love with Crouch."

"And you might see if they've got any leads on Bertha Jorkins while you're at it," Sirius added, gesturing to the _Daily Prophets_. "That's just weird enough to have my attention."

"Bagman said they hadn't," Harry answered.

"Yeah, he's quoted in the article— going on about Bertha's poor memory. Evidently she's changed," Sirius told him, "because the Bertha I knew may have been dim, but she had an excellent memory for gossip. I can see her being a bit of a liability in the Ministry, maybe that's why they didn't bother looking for her for so long. . . ." He sighed and rubbed his eyes. "Time?" he asked.

Harry and Hermione both checked their watches, but Hermione was the only one to reply. "Half past three."

"An hour and a half we've been here? Really?" Sirius asked. "You three'd better get back up the school, then. Just . . . listen. . . ." He glowered at his godson. "I don't want any of you sneaking up here, got it? Just send letters, and we still want to hear about anything out of the ordinary. But don't leave Hogwarts without permission, it might be the chance someone's been waiting for to attack you, all right?"

"No one's tried to attack me so far but a dragon and a couple of grindylows," Harry argued.

Sirius's glare, however, only darkened. "I don't _care_. I'll breathe again when this tournament's over, and that's not til June. Oh, and if you're talking about me, just call me Snuffles, all right?"

Harry nodded and glanced at Regulus, who shrugged. "I'm not the liability here. Reg should be fine."

Sirius handed Harry to napkin back. "We'll walk you back to the village, maybe scrounge another few papers." He glowered at his brother for a moment before they both transformed and led the kids out of the cave.

* * *

"So. . . ." Sirius started when they got back into the cave, crossing his arms over his chest. "Will you care to tell me the real reason you didn't tell me about the Mark?"

They hadn't stopped for papers in Hogsmeade, after all, since after seeing Harry, Ron, and Hermione off, Sirius had headed straight back up to the cave and Regulus figured he might as well get the rant over with before Sirius started with a full head of steam already worked up. Unfortunately, this also meant he hadn't had much time to think up a reasonable excuse. "I gave it to you with the kids, Sirius," he said quietly, crossing his arms over his chest himself.

"I'm not stupid, Reg. I know you left some of it out."

"What makes you say that? You _are_ stressing out over this entirely too much, and the secrecy with which we've got to handle things isn't helping matters any," Regulus answered.

"If you cared about my mental state all that much, you would have checked me into an animal therapist in France with some bizarre explanation," Sirius snapped.

Regulus didn't touch this one, since he was probably right. "Sirius, you're being rid—" he started instead.

"I don't want to hear it," his brother snapped, waving a hand as if brushing all possible protests away. "The issue here is that, apparently, you don't trust me."

Regulus raised an eyebrow. "What makes you say that?"

"I'd have sure as hell told you if it was me instead of you!"

Regulus sighed. "No, Sirius, you wouldn't have. Because if the shoe were on the other foot, _I_ wouldn't understand, and you'd know why. This. . . ." He shook his head. "This is worse, in a way, than seeing him on the street. Because you know it and you can't see him. Because it's a part of me that I don't have any control over, and dammit, Sirius, you know how much I'd like that."

"Well, now, at least," Sirius admitted. "Once upon a time you'd've let people push you around."

Regulus rolled his eyes. "We're not talking about once upon a time, and I really don't want to go into a discussion of it," he snapped. "We're talking about now. And yes, fine, while every reason I gave you when the kids were around is a valid one, it wasn't the main one. I just didn't want to listen to anyone dredge up the past or dismiss it, even if it is the Mark, as just a tasteless tattoo."

Sirius raised his eyebrows. "That sounds like you've actually told someone."

"Well, I mentioned it to Snape. . . ."

"You told _Snape_ and not me?" Sirius demanded, throwing his hands dramatically in the air and causing Buckbeak to look over at their argument— which he had previously been ignoring— in alarm. "Honestly, Regulus. . . ."

"Snape knew what I was talking about," Regulus pointed out quietly.

Sirius glowered at him. "I can't know what you're talking about, if you don't _tell me about it in the first place_," he growled.

"So I've kept my mouth shut. So have you, Sirius— you haven't told me _anything_ I haven't already asked you about," Regulus pointed out. "Neither of us _want_ to, it just comes from us both getting burned. It hasn't killed you."

For a moment or two, Sirius only continued to glower at him. "Someday it might. But all right," he answered finally. "No, no I haven't. But I haven't _not_ told you anything you needed to know. Yeah, I haven't told you everything, but, Reg, you haven't told me _anything_."

For a minute or so, Regulus just stared after his brother. Then he shook his head. "You know, I hate it when you're right," he announced. Then he glanced out the cave opening, and, running his fingers distractedly through his hair, and added, "Sit down and don't interrupt me, otherwise I'll never get going again. This'll probably take awhile."

**

* * *

Author's Note:** I've been simultaneously looking forward to and dreading the posting of this chapter, just because of what it is— the one where the wall finally starts to come down (although that's mostly next chapter) and the one where Regulus finally comes clean with his brother about the Mark (doesn't that make some of you feel better?). Obviously, this does borrow a few more lines from the book. Jackline: well, that's one question answered. Hopefully I can do the other satisfactorily next chapter. Gwinna: that's a fair point about Hermione and Winky . . . but I have no earthly idea how to answer it. Until chapter twelve, cheers! — Loki


	12. Building a Bridge

Regulus sighed, racking his brain for the fastest, safest way to explain things to Sirius, one that hopefully wouldn't hurt as much as dragging out the entire story of his own stupidity and the number of things he wasn't proud of. He wasn't ready for that; he probably never would be ready for that.

After a few minutes of expectant silence, Sirius, who had listened to Regulus for once and seated himself on the floor by the cave wall, cleared his throat.

Regulus shook his head, but he started on the next subject that came to mind. "You know what it takes to cast the Unforgivables, right? Of course you do, every Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher we ever had drilled it into us, and it was on every final exam we ever took. Well, I don't have it, Sirius, and I don't think you have it, either, if that was your plan thirteen years ago when you went after Pettigrew. Even with as much as you hated him then . . . there's no way you hated him enough. I've been up against people I've hated, too, and I couldn't. I don't understand how the people that can cast them have any will to live, you have to hate life that much to do _Avada Kedavra_. . . ." He shuddered.

"Bella or Stan or Dolph used to cover for me, sometimes . . . well, mostly Rabastan or Rodolphus, since Bella didn't like to cover for anybody. The rest of the time he'd accept that I was young, seventeen or eighteen, and couldn't always get the focus I needed."

Sirius looked at him strangely and opened his mouth, as if to ask when Voldemort accepted anything, but he caught himself and shut it once again.

Regulus chuckled humorlessly. "Well, he didn't threaten to kill me. That's something. He left that for Bellatrix, since she got so much more frustrated that I never could than he would have. He'd've just killed me, after all.

"No, wait, I _did_ pull off the Imperius once. I guess since Bella was still trying to control me back then . . . and she wasn't going to cover for me this time; there was no patience left in her, and it was just me and her and I was running out of time I could buy with the Dark Lord. . . . I just wanted some control over _something_! And I guess I wanted it badly enough. . . ."

He threw himself onto the floor beside his brother with another sigh and rubbed his temples. "It wasn't the Killing Curse, it wasn't even the Cruciatus . . . properly done it was the mildest of the Unforgivables, even. But . . . it was like something . . . a piece of my soul or something, maybe, I don't know . . . it felt as if something in me had curled up and _died_ or something. Awful . . . how did Bellatrix get _used_ to that?"

There was a fairly pregnant pause while Regulus tried to sort through his thoughts on the incident and find something coherent to say. Sirius lifted his hand as if to grab his brother's shoulder, but thought better of it halfway through the gesture. He let it drop. Regulus thought that was for the best— he'd probably have pulled out of it again, anyway.

"My control over the man didn't last long, obviously. Not because he could fight it but because I couldn't keep it, not while I felt that horrible about it. . . . I _really_ hate using people, you know. I . . . I don't know how I lasted as long as I did. Fear, I suppose."

He shook his head, trying to clear it. "And Bella . . . Bella was proud of me, didn't realize it was disgust rather than unfocused spell casting that made me loose control. She said I was finally shaping up. . . ."

Regulus chuckled humorlessly again. "Thanks, Bella, I really needed another reason to hate what I was doing, when the first girl I saw you kill looked like Cissy four or five months down the road. . . . I joined for real just after I learned she was pregnant with the baby," he added so Sirius would know what he was talking about.

Again Sirius opened his mouth, but Regulus shook his head. Silence settled in for a few more minutes before Regulus broke it by pulling his jacket sleeve up again to look at the Mark. "Like I needed a reminder," he muttered. "It won't go away until he's gone again, you know. _If_ he goes again."

He traced the outline of the Mark, as he'd done so many times in France to assure himself he wasn't dreaming, that it really was there. "He branded it on us. Marked us out like some Muggles do cattle. It's a wonder I lasted as long as I did, really. _Damn_, I hate using people. Especially after I've _been_ used."

He faded off into silence long enough that Sirius risked a question. "You told Harry it burns when he calls you. How, exactly . . . do you know what he used?"

"Protean Charm, I think. And there's no way to take it off. I checked every spellbook I could get my hands on, before and after faking my death, and there's no way. And you know how many spellbooks dad could've gotten me if I asked."

Sirius nodded.

Regulus chuckled with real humor this time, his mind lingering on their father. "Dad. . . ." he mumbled, smiling slightly.

"What about him?" Sirius demanded.

"There's something he used to tell Narcissa or I about Bella whenever she was acting particularly out of hand— he did more after you left, when she really started going round the bend. Always did it where Mum couldn't hear, of course, since Bella was _her_ favorite. . . . Funny how you always used to claim I was, with the way she doted on Bellatrix."

"I meant between the two of us," Sirius answered. "Not that it matters anymore. What did Dad used to say about Bella, though? You've got me curious now."

"I guess the inbreeding was bound to catch up with us sometime."

Sirius outright laughed at that. "I think he said that to me, once or twice. I'd forgotten how much he hated Bella. Within the family, at least, Dad had reasonable taste, and I guess he would've known where the inbreeding was going. I always thought you were like him in that respect. Him and Alphard."

Regulus smiled crookedly. Since Alphard had long been Sirius's favorite relative, that was high praise. "Anything else you want to know that you think I'll admit?"

"You didn't just leave because Bella threatened to kill me, Reggie. I've been honest enough with you about why I broke out of Azkaban. What were the other reasons?"

"I hated the whole damn set of ideals and propaganda in the end. And . . . the Dark Lord's half blood himself. I have a hard enough time stomaching murder anymore, genocide against his own kind's even worse." Regulus shook his head. "Otherwise?"

"Well. . . ." Sirius looked thoughtful.

"You've got the look in your eye that tells me you're going to ask for specifics about stuff I can't tell you. He was bright enough to come up with Secret Keepers for a fair amount, and usually he was the Secret Keeper. I don't doubt Dumbledore did the same thing."

Sirius shook his head. "All right. You have a point, there."

"Good. I'll take what you told Harry, Remus, and I last year and the kids this afternoon as your talk."

Sirius nodded. "I'd probably repeat myself, anyway." He ran his fingers through his hair and glanced outside. "I don't even _know_ what's important in Azkaban until something happens that reminds me of it. Was Barty Crouch Jr. in your year, Reg?"

"Nah. Couple of years behind. He seemed rather attached to Rabastan or Snape sometimes, though." Regulus shook his head. "Does it really matter thirteen years later whether he was a Death Eater or not, anyway?"

"I guess not. . . . I dunno, it's just one of those things that you might feel a little better about if you knew he was."

"And worse if you knew he wasn't. Face it, the best move the Ministry made after the war was putting Barty Crouch in the Department of International Magical Cooperation. The worst was probably handing Cornelius Fudge the Ministry."

"Have we ever had a good Minister?" Sirius asked.

"Some of the thirteenth and fourteenth century ones seemed decent enough," Regulus answered flippantly, glad to move on to a less morbid subject than Death Eaters or Bella or Crouch.

"History again," Sirius muttered, rolling his eyes. "I swear you are the only kid I know who must've paid attention in Binns's class."

"I dunno. Hermione probably does."

Sirius opened his mouth, no doubt to make some rather unflattering comparison between the Gryffindor bookworm and his brother. However, Buckbeak, indignant that the two of them had been in the cave together this long without either giving him the least bit of attention, squawked piercingly. Both of them jumped and Sirius looked over at the eagle's face, wearing an expression of angry pleading that didn't suit him, and laughed. He went over to scratch the feathers on his neck, muttering about self-important bird-like creatures. He compared the hippogriff rather unflatteringly with Madame Pince, which made Regulus laugh and Buckbeak glare.

Regulus watched them for a minute or so, but his thoughts drifted back towards the beginning of their conversation. He glanced down at his arm. The sleeve of his jacket was still pushed passed his elbow and the snake almost seemed alive in the shadows, swaying slightly as the wind tousled nearby trees. It still scared him, and it probably always would.

Sirius glanced back and stopped stroking the hippogriff, cautiously walking back towards his brother. He leaned against the wall and glanced back down at Regulus's arm, at the Mark. "Are you all right?" he asked quietly.

Regulus glanced back up and then down at the mark, rubbing the blob that would soon become the serpent's tongue— it wasn't whole yet, at least. "The funny thing about the Dark Lord is that we're more afraid of him than you ever were," he said quietly, pulling his sleeve down once again. "You'd do something, while we're probably all just sitting there and sweating."

"Yeah," Sirius answered dismissively. "_Are you all right_? I know I felt like hell right after that night in the Shrieking Shack, and if you're feeling the same way. . . ?"

Regulus shook his head and got up. "Nah, I'll be all right. He's not back yet, and I'll know he actually came when it burns, so why worry until then?"

"You're better not worrying about things then me, then," Sirius answered, getting to his feet and wandering over to Buckbeak again. "I'd've been panicking about this months ago."

Regulus joined him. "Nah," he answered, rubbing the hippogriff's beak. "Really, I think you deal with stress better. I'm just a little more experienced than you are with the stuff we can't control."

**

* * *

Author's Note: **Hm . . . well, the wall is starting to come down now, which is always a good thing, although we can expect more fights in the future since communications a little more open. In truth, I'm just glad to get this particular sequence up, since my original plan was to have it done in two chapters rather than three. Anyway, enough rambling, thanks to everyone who took the time to review! Cheers! —Loki 


	13. A Last Wait

The next few weeks passed in relative peace. Ron forwarded them Percy's reply to their inquiry about Crouch around Easter, which amused the both of them for a few minutes. "Kid needs to take some of the stuffing out of his shirt," Regulus muttered, tossing his brother the letter.

Sirius laughed, looked the missive over, and shook his head. "True, but I still don't like it. I've never heard of Crouch taking that much time off."

"Maybe his age is getting to him," Regulus suggested. "It happens to the best of us eventually, and from the sound of it Crouch certainly doesn't qualify as the best of us."

Sirius shook his head. "Nah, but he's stubborn enough to keep going to work when he's dying."

Wary of another argument— they'd gotten more frequent since their afternoon with the kids, particularly over things that may or may not have anything to do with the Triwizard Tournament— Regulus dropped the subject with the announcement that he was going hunting.

* * *

Regulus was returning from another such hunting trip about a week later— both to keep the peace and because they really did need to be out almost constantly anymore to catch something, even with the kids sending food. Something was going on, and the animals knew it.

He'd actually been successful, dragging a rabbit in that, considering the size of a smallish gray fox, was nearly two-thirds his size, and walked in to find Sirius ranting about something. Since he really couldn't sigh with his mouth full, Regulus exhaled irritably and dropped the rabbit out of Buckbeak's reach. Then he transformed himself. "Sirius, what's going on?"

"I don't know, and that's what scares me," Sirius answered, looking down at the letter in his hands. That was the final piece of the puzzle for Regulus— something had happened to Harry.

"Can I read that?" he asked, pointing to the parchment. It looked lengthy. "Maybe I can make more sense of it than you can."

"Well, it can't hurt," Sirius mumbled, handing it over.

Regulus scanned it. The details themselves seemed clear enough to him; it was what they meant that puzzled Harry, Sirius, and frankly Regulus himself. The Third Task of the Tournament was a maze, after which Viktor Krum had asked to talk with Harry. Everything was all right, there— he'd just wanted to ask about Hermione, the girl he'd taken with him to the Yule Ball and was clearly attracted to. Crouch had come out of the woods during the conversation, clearly off his rocker, and demanded to see Dumbledore. Harry had left him with Krum and went to get the headmaster, but when he came back Krum was stunned and Crouch was nowhere to be found. Karkaroff had been understandably furious and Moody had been unable to find Crouch after a night's search. "This is . . . bizarre," Regulus said finally.

"I don't know what Harry thought he was doing, going off alone with Krum," Sirius growled. "I mean, we've _warned_ him about Karkaroff and the Durmstrang champion, and I wouldn't put it passed Karkaroff to use his students to hurt someone. . . ."

"Calm down, Sirius. That might be justified if he'd gone off with Karkaroff or a stranger, but Krum _had_ been dating Hermione. I'd've trusted him for the length of a conversation without any proof of manipulation, too, and you know how likely I am to trust anything."

"You're. . . ." Sirius caught himself, aware that the last thing he needed was to start another fight about the past. "I still don't think it was a bright idea— with _anyone_ near the Forbidden Forest at night."

"You're one to talk."

"If anything had attacked us we'd've let Moony have 'em," Sirius answered, waving a hand dismissively. "Harry didn't have that kind of insurance, did he?"

"Well . . . no. but he didn't get hurt, so can we please, just leave it alone?" Regulus scanned the letter again. "Well, I'll admit you were right about Crouch— some sort of funny business was going on there. Still wish I knew what, although from the look of it we might never know."

"I told you it was out of character," Sirius muttered.

Regulus nodded absently and continued rescanning the letter. "That doesn't fit," he said finally.

"What?" Sirius demanded, stopping mid-pace to change directions and come up to read over his brother's shoulder. "What doesn't fit?"

Regulus pointed to one line about Crouch's rambling— "_he kept saying Voldemort was getting stronger— well, actually he said the Dark Lord was (Hermione's hanging over my shoulder telling me to be accurate)_." "Why in the hell would Crouch be calling Voldemort the Dark Lord? It doesn't fit."

Sirius lifted one eyebrow. "Explain."

"There's a reason every conversation we've had about Voldemort lately has involved the sentence 'Reggie, would you please not call him that?' It's the Death Eaters and the elitist purebloods that refer to him as the Dark Lord— not the vehemently anti-Death Eater judge whose family has been sitting on the fence about the pureblood question for centuries, like Crouch's. You know that. It should have been a much clumsier euphemism like most people use."

"Crouch is about as much of a Death Eater as McGonagall," Sirius pointed out.

"I know that. It's just . . . odd. Like I said, it doesn't fit. Maybe he was under the Imperius by a former Death Eater or something. He could have put Harry's name in the goblet, since he would have been there when Dumbledore unveiled it, and it's the sort of slip up that someone controlling him might let happen— especially since most of the time it would go unnoticed."

"Why would someone Imperius Crouch when there are so many weaker minds around?" Sirius asked him.

Regulus took a minute or so to come up with an answer to that one. "Because he has more and better contacts in the Ministry— more sources of good information— than Bagman and they were the only two Ministry employees, perhaps?" he suggested.

"And then they had him stop coming to work?" Sirius asked pointedly.

"You win. Really, I've dismantled enough of your theories in the past I suppose its about time you dismantled one of mine," Regulus admitted. "I just hope this isn't going back to Severus Snape."

"It's not. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt so long as Dumbledore's hanging over his shoulder," Sirius informed his brother tartly. "And I still think Karkaroff put Harry's name in the goblet."

"So. . . ." Regulus ran his finger absently over the crease on the back of the letter where it had been folded. "Then Karkaroff attacked his own student?"

"I'm not saying _that_," Sirius snapped. "I doubt even he'd do something as senseless as that. I don't know who stunned Krum and made off with Crouch in the woods, and the possibility of two people out to kill someone at Hogwarts right now worries me. A lot." He sighed and started pacing once again. "Harry doesn't need to go sticking his nose in this again, not when he's gotten past the first two tasks almost too easily. Not when it's going to happen in the third task."

Regulus watched him pace for a moment or two before his gaze drifted back down to the letter in his hands. He read it one more time and came up with the same explanation as before— within itself, the event made sense. It was what happened before, and while Harry was gone, that made it bizarre, particularly against the backdrop of the Death Eater's increased activity.

He shook his head. "Well, I guess we can't entirely rule out Karkaroff stunning Krum. Let's assume Hermione has decent taste in men, since she otherwise seems a decent enough girl. Then Krum's probably not in league with Karkaroff, but to go out of the country with him there had to be a modicum of trust between himself and his teacher, right? But if he knew Karkaroff was up to something— and Karkaroff kidnapped Crouch, he's definitely up to something— then there'd be a possibility of Krum turning his headmaster in. Right?"

"I s'pose," Sirius mumbled. At least he'd stopped pacing, which in Regulus's experience meant he'd stopped toying with his own theories long enough to give someone else's a bit of serious thought.

"And whoever attacked Krum didn't hurt him, just stunned him, as if he just didn't need complications. I guess we can't rule Karkaroff out."

Sirius nodded and ran his fingers distractedly through his hair. "That doesn't make me feel much better, Reggie. If he'd be willing to stun his own students . . . even if there is only one of him in this case."

"I'm probably wrong," Regulus admitted, shrugging. "Although I did know Karkaroff well enough to know he might. He definitely wouldn't risk hurting Krum or getting himself turned in by having a conversation and then trying to _obliviate _his memory if he couldn't persuade him. He's too much of a coward to risk damaging him with an improper memory charm."

Sirius nodded and tugged the parchment gently out of his brother's hand. "We're not sharing any of this with Harry," he announced. "Kid's got enough of James's in him to try to investigate. And its not as if Dumbledore hasn't got Moody on Crouch in whatever time the poor man can spare."

"Remind him of that, then," Regulus suggested.

"Like he'll listen to me after everything _I_ did at his age," Sirius mumbled, uncapping a pen and starting to scribble the note.

"He's more likely to listen to you than he is to me," Regulus pointed out. "Kid's got my measure by now— I'd try to hold everyone back, because I'm afraid they'll get themselves killed."

Sirius looked over at Regulus and raised an eyebrow. "Really, Reggie, you're not that bad," he answered. "And you've always got a reason, whether or not I want to admit it."

Regulus smiled ruefully. "He's less likely to want to admit it than even _you_," he pointed out.

* * *

Another week later Harry sent them a letter about adventures in twenty-year-old Wizengamot trials through Dumbledore's pensive. For some reason, this spurred another fifteen-minute conversation about whether or not Crouch was bloody-minded enough to break the Imperius curse. Buckbeak got tired of the fighting and demanded their attention before they reached a satisfactory conclusion.

Afraid that Harry was going to try to sort Crouch out, Sirius's letter-writing got more and more frequent until he was writing almost daily and Regulus wiped every uninteresting Daily Prophet article before the previous month clean so he'd have the parchment. All the letters looked basically the same to Regulus— filled with similar warnings and reassurances, until sending the owl out became almost ritual.

Between stress over Harry and anticipation of the Triwizard Tournament's end, Regulus's own worries about Voldemort got pushed to the back burner once again, except in his dreams, which occasionally called the past back to him. Almost as if something bad was looming in his subconscious, these got more frequent as the task approached.

"Reggie!"

"Hm?" Regulus jerked out of a circle of hooded figures and back into the cave, staring up at the fuzzy picture of his brother. He pulled his glasses out of his jacket pocket and sat up. "I was dreaming _again_?" he asked.

Sirius nodded. "Sure you don't need to talk about it?" he asked, as he had since the end of February.

"Yes." He sighed. "Honestly, Sirius, whenever you dream, you dream about the same thing, something you couldn't have known about to prevent. You cannot tell me that's not as pathetic as my multiple nightmares."

"I don't think either of them are pathetic," Sirius answered. He squeezed his brother's shoulder. "What was this one _about,_ anyway? I've been up to hear you moaning and muttering about Bella, but I don't think I've ever heard you _yelp_ in your sleep before."

"The night I got the Mark," Regulus admitted.

"I didn't think tattoos were that painful," Sirius mumbled. His eyes drifted down to Regulus's left forearm. "Well, maybe they would be if Voldemort were the tattoo artist."

"For the last time, Sirius, it's not a tattoo, it's a _brand_. Maybe you should try pressing red-hot metal against _your _skin and see how you like it," Regulus drawled.

Sirius chuckled, more because he was startled by his brother's blatant sarcasm than because he actually found it funny. Then he sobered up quickly. "He's not back yet, is he?" he asked quietly. "You said it burned when he called, and I guess that might make you dream about it."

With exaggerated movements, Regulus looked under his sleeve. "It's still red. Honestly, though, Sirius— I'd have definitely woken up had it burned because damn it, it _hurts_ when that happens." He gently shoved his brother off of his arm and started to lay back down. "And while I know the last task's tomorrow so you're beyond nervous, will you please _try_ to get some sleep? You need it."

When he took off his glasses, he could see the fuzzy outline of his brother looking out the cave at a horizon still hours from turning pink. "I can try, I guess," Sirius mumbled.

**

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Author's Note: **Happy Turkey Day to any other Americans out there, since I'm posting this on Thursday again. I swear the college application is going to eat my brain. That said, I have a long weekend and 2-3 chapters of this fic left, depending on how well it goes (Knowing me, probably three), so I'll see what I can get done. Thanks to everyone for the reviews; xtotallyatpeacex, I'll go back and see if I can't vlear that up now. Cheers! -- Loki


	14. The Third Task

Sirius actually managed to resist the urge to wake his brother up at dawn the next morning. How he did so Regulus wasn't sure— patience was hardly one of Sirius's strong suites. "Go hunting," Regulus grumbled when he was woken up. "The task's not until this evening."

Sirius raised an eyebrow. "I already have. I didn't catch anything and I wound up close to Hogwarts. They were dragging a _sphinx_ into the maze."

Regulus sighed. He'd been jerking in and out of nightmares since Sirius had woken him up from the one about the Mark, which was hardly the most restful way to spend his night. "I guess that would take your mind completely off rabbits," he mumbled. "But really, this is the Triwizard Tournament. Did you really expect them to leave the maze empty?"

"No, but, still . . . without actually seeing what they put into it I could tell myself I had an overactive imagination," Sirius pointed out.

"You do." Regulus took his glasses out of his picket and got to his feet. "Now, what are we supposed to do for the rest of the day? I know what we're doing after the task. . . ."

Sirius raised an eyebrow. "And what's that?"

"Congratulating Harry on surviving and heading back to France, so at least one of us can show our face in public without being recognized as a Black."

"Unless something happens," Sirius pointed out.

"All right, I'm usually the pessimist but I'm going to cling to optimism in this instance— he got through the first two tasks, and he's probably better prepared for this one, because he's known what it is for much longer than the other two. It'll be all right."

Sirius shook his head. "They saved it for the third task."

Regulus couldn't argue with that one, really, since he believed the same thing Sirius did, but if it meant occupying his brother's mind with something— anything— but impending crisis, he was prepared to try. Buckbeak, however, interrupted them at that moment by emitting a loud squawk.

Both of them turned around to see what had upset the hippogriff _now_. Buckbeak was making swipes at a barn owl that didn't seem too happy himself. Muttering, Regulus stalked over and held out his arm for the owl to perch on, moving out of the hippogriff's reach. Sirius went to calm Buckbeak down.

"Damn, I'll be glad when the owls're coming through the kitchen and Buckbeak's in another room," Regulus muttered, taking the letter off of the owl's leg. "I don't quite understand why he hates them so much." The owl hopped from Regulus's arm to his shoulder as if to read the message he'd carried as Regulus unfolded it.

"Yeah . . . what's Harry want the day of the task?" Sirius added.

"This isn't Harry's handwriting."

"Who else knows we're here?" Sirius asked sensibly.

"Dumbledore," Regulus pointed out. "He's asking that we not draw attention to ourselves by showing up on the Quidditch pitch, as there are too many people there already and you _are_ rather hard to miss." He glanced over at the owl. "We aren't sending a reply. There's no point."

The owl cocked his head before launching himself off of Regulus's shoulder and starting back towards the school.

"What else are we supposed to do?" Sirius demanded.

"Look at it logically, Sirius— during the first task we could lurk under the stands and still see what was going on. The second task was around the lake, so it was just a matter of finding a spot that people weren't already occupying. On the other hand, we'd actually have to be in the Quidditch stands to see over twenty foot walls, and the entire school— including the ones known to skip Quidditch games— will be out there for the task, not to mention Beauxbatons students, Durmstrang students, various parents and judges, and possibly a _Daily Prophet _reporter. There are too many people _not_ to remark on your presence, and when you're going to go charging into the maze the minute something awry happens. . . . It's just a bad idea. It had occurred to me, too, but I knew better than to try to talk you out of it."

Sirius grumbled something under his breath.

"On the other hand, Dumbledore _did _recommend Hagrid's garden, since that part of the school will be completely deserted and it's a lot closer than the cave."

* * *

Sirius muttered something else under his breath, but he nodded.

Sirius was literally pacing a rut into Hagrid's pumpkin patch, and it was beginning to annoy Regulus. He understood the worry, but he didn't understand why pacing did anything to ease it.

Finally, he got annoyed enough to come out from behind the large pumpkin he was using for shade and wander over to Hagrid's back door, changing to human form as he did so. The door swung open when he turned the handle, as he'd half expected it to. "Hagrid really needs to learn to lock his door," he mumbled.

Sirius evidently heard, looked around, and transformed into a man as well. "Reggie, what're you doing?"

"Distracting you. Come on." He stepped through the doorway, and Sirius followed a little reluctantly.

"How did you know Hagrid's door would be open?" he asked.

"I didn't. On the other hand, it doesn't seem like the sort of thing Hagrid would think about, does it? But he might notice the rut you just got through working in his pumpkin patch, since he probably pays a lot more attention to his garden than his door. You're not going to work one in the floor."

Regulus looked absently around. Everything in the cabin seemed to have been built on a scale of one-and-a-half to the average sized person, but then Hagrid was eight feet tall. A boarhound had been lurking by the bed. The dog got to his feet and, whether he somehow recognized inherently that Regulus was a cat person and wouldn't appreciate it or just found Sirius more interesting, wandered right passed Regulus to rub up against Sirius and drool on his jeans.

While Sirius knelt down to pet the dog, Regulus looked around. In the absence of both electricity and a wand, the place had almost taken on the look of an oversize frontier cabin from the late eighteen-hundreds— pre-industrial days. "Cast iron stove," he muttered absently.

Sirius looked up. "What about it?"

Regulus chuckled. "The surprise isn't that he has one, since there's no electricity around here, but that I know how to use one," he answered, looking it over. "Or at least, one that's a little bit smaller."

"When'd you learn?" Sirius demanded. It was the same question he'd asked the first time Regulus had turned on the electrical stove in France.

"There are still out-of-the-way backwaters without a lot of electrical items in the Muggle world," Regulus answered. "And in the wizarding ones these are pretty common in the kitchen— not that you pay a lot of attention to what's in the kitchen, right?"

Sirius nodded absently and checked the tags on the dog's collar. "Fang, eh?" he asked. The dog seemed to grin and wagged his tail. "Well, goodness knows they're big enough to warrant naming you after them."

"Hagrid actually gave one a name suggesting it's vicious?" Regulus asked. He regarded Fang, who was washing Sirius's face, for a moment or two. "And he chooses the one that's not vicious at all. Of course. What was that thing that Filch swore was trying to eat his cat? The one he called Spot?"

"The baby griffin?"

"Yeah. Whatever happened to it?"

"Well, according to Remus, who got on with Hagrid best, he's living in a mountain reserve in Greece," Sirius answered. Fang had rolled onto his back and Sirius was now scratching his belly. "Dumbledore convinced him to give it up so that Filch wouldn't kill it one night."

"Sounds about right." Regulus shook his head and leaned against the stove, watching his brother play with Fang for a few minutes. "Sirius, your hands are shaking."

"Are they?" Sirius looked down at them in surprise, as if he hadn't noticed. "That's why I pace, Reg. I've got too much nervous energy right now not to do _something_."

Regulus shook his head. "There's got to be a way to calm you down," he mumbled.

"They could cancel the Third Task and not reschedule it," Sirius suggested.

"I have no power over that. On the other hand, I may take a leaf out of Andromeda and Alphard's books and make a pot of tea."

Sirius shook his head. "I suppose getting Hagrid's permission to use his kitchen is out of the question."

"I fully intend to wash everything and put it back where I found it," Regulus answered defensively. "You're just so nervous it's making _me_ nervous."

"I _hate_ not being able to do anything, even more than I hated not catching Peter this time last year," Sirius muttered. "I'll get the teapot. Either my memory's playing tricks on me or he used to keep it on the top shelf."

Hagrid did keep the teapot on the top shelf— Sirius, who was another head taller than his brother, wound up standing on a chair to get it down. The tea bags had been stuffed inside. While Sirius was figuring this out, Regulus got a fire started in the stove with his wand— no point in using matches when he could get it much hotter much faster with a spell.

It was getting dark now, and Sirius borrowed Regulus's wand to light a couple of candles and got back down on the floor with Fang. Regulus was half-tempted to suggest that he transform back into a dog himself— he and Fang would be about the same size, then— and play tug-of-war or something of the sort.

The water began to boil and Regulus turned around. Then he yelped and grabbed his left arm.

Sirius shoved Fang off of him and went over to the stove. "And you told me back in France that you didn't trust _me_ near the stove."

"Sirius," Regulus mumbled.

Sirius didn't appear to hear, and put his hand on his brother's shoulder. "Let go of it and remind me what the spell for burns is. From the sound of it, you got yourself pretty good."

"Sirius,_ I didn't burn_ _myself_," Regulus growled.

Then Sirius seemed to realize what part of his arm Regulus had a hold on. "What's going on?" he asked quietly. With some effort he pried his brother's arm away and pushed up the sleeve to take a look at the Mark. "It's black," he mumbled. "Shouldn't it be red?"

"Normally it is," Regulus answered faintly. "But not now. He's back, Sirius," Regulus muttered, pulling out of his brother's grip and pulling his sleeve back down over the Mark. "He's back and he wants all of us to know."

For a few minutes Sirius just stared at his brother. "Harry," he muttered finally, starting towards the door.

"No, Sirius, listen to me," Regulus growled, grabbing his brother's elbow and trying to stop him. "Whatever's happened to Harry, it happened right in front of Dumbledore. I highly doubt that Voldemort would return right in front of the only man he ever feared. And if he came up with some way to vanish Harry to wherever he needed to kid to be without Dumbledore stopping him. . . . Sirius, there's nothing you can do."

Sirius stiffened in his brother's grip. "Reggie, I can't. . . ."

"Dumbledore knows what he's doing. You're only going to complicate things," Regulus added, hoping that the voice of reason might mean something to Sirius. "Let him handle it."

After another few moments, Sirius relaxed a little, enough that Regulus felt comfortable letting go. He'd started shaking again, though. Regulus pushed him gently towards the table and told him to sit down. Fang put his head in his lap as if he sensed something strange was going on.

Purely because there was no point in not, Regulus finished making the pot of tea and filled two oversized mugs. The rest he poured into a bowl and put on the floor for Fang, who was the only one who drank any of it. Regulus stared at between his mug and his brother, who was up pacing the floor again. Eventually he emptied them both into Fang's bowl so he could wash the pot and cups and put them away before Hagrid got back.

"Sirius," he said quietly when he'd climbed down from the shelves.

Sirius looked over in surprise.

"Maybe . . . maybe we ought to go and find Dumbledore and ask him what's going on. He knows I've got the Mark, so you know something could be wrong with Harry, and he can't blame us for panicking. We can check the quidditch field and his office. He's bound to be around here somewhere. . . ."

Sirius nodded and opened the door a little. He jumped and looked back. "McGonagall's on her way here," he announced. "I think we both need to transform and get out there."

**

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Author's Note: **Gearing up for a rather complicated denumonte, here. Next chapter will finally involve some answers, although 1994 is threatening to be a chapter longer than my last prediction. Hopefully I'll know for sure by next week. StarGirl5000: Welcome aboard. And thank you to everyone who reviewed; it really does make my day! Cheers! -- Loki


	15. Voldemort Returned

McGonagall led the pair of them to Dumbledore's office and informed them that Dumbledore would be with them as soon as he could, although Merlin alone knew why he needed to see a couple of dogs or when "as soon as possible" would be. Regulus and Sirius stared at her politely like well-behaved animals until she left them in the office.

Sirius transformed just after the door shut. "If he called for us, something definitely happened," he announced, and immediately began to pace.

Regulus transformed himself but didn't reply, only took one of the seats by Dumbledore's desk and watched his brother's progress back and forth across the room. There wasn't anything he could say— there wasn't anything _either_ of them could say— it was just a matter of waiting for Dumbledore now.

Occasionally Sirius muttered "What happened?" but it was neither a question Regulus could answer nor one he thought Sirius intended to be answered, so he kept quiet, toying with the sleeve of his jacket and trying not to think about what was under it until he absolutely had to.

Finally, however, the oak door creaked open on ancient hinges and Harry and Dumbledore stood in the doorway. Seemingly without moving, Sirius was across the room. "Harry, are you all right? I _knew_ something like this— what happened?"

Regulus removed himself from the chair so that Sirius could lead Harry to it. Both of them were trembling.

"What happened?" Sirius asked again.

Dumbledore supplied an answer this time. "As I'm sure Regulus has already informed you, Voldemort has returned. He did so by planting a follower at this school, one that until tonight I did not recognize— Barty Crouch, Jr."

Regulus looked over sharply. "Crouch's kid? Little blonde tagalong of the likes of Rabastan and Snape?"

Dumbledore nodded. "His father smuggled him out of Azkaban as a last favor to his mother and kept him under the Imperius Curse. Bertha Jorkins found out, and Voldemort did so through her when she disappeared on vacation. He invaded Crouch's home and put Barty under the Imperius Curse rather than his son, who has been impersonating Alastor Moody all year."

"So he _was_ a Death Eater," Sirius murmured. "Not that it excuses the way Crouch ran the trial. . . ."

Dumbledore nodded. "The imposter Moody put Harry's name in the Goblet of Fire and created a portkey out of the Triwizard Cup. Through this, Harry was transported to the place where Voldemort returned to power."

Sirius nodded vaguely. Regulus whistled under his breath. If there was anything he admired about the Dark Lord, it was his ability to plan and to fool anyone short of Dumbledore in the carrying out. It seemed this time, he had almost succeeded in fooling Dumbledore as well.

Meanwhile, Fawks, Dumbledore's phoenix had come to perch on Harry's knee. The boy was stroking it absently, his eyes half-closed as if he were almost asleep.

Dumbledore sat down at his desk and leaned over it, looking intently at Harry. "Harry," he said. "I need you to tell me what happened after the portkey transported you out of the maze."

Sirius looked up in surprise. "He doesn't have to do it tonight, does he, Dumbledore?" he asked, putting a hand protectively on Harry's shoulder. "Let him rest. He's earned it."

Harry and Regulus both turned to the headmaster to see if he would agree. Dumbledore, however, simply shook his head. "If I thought I could ease the pain by giving you a potion for an enchanted, dreamless sleep and letting you delay the moment in which you had to relive the experience, I would. But I know better. Numbing the pain will only make it sharper when you must feel it. You have already shown more courage than I would normally ask of anyone tonight, Harry, but I must ask you to demonstrate it one more time. I ask you to tell us what happened."

Sirius looked as if he would continue to protest, but Fawks let out a quavering, melodious note. Harry took a deep breath and started, slowly, to tell the tale.

"I . . . I told Cedric to take the cup with me, so it transported us both to a graveyard. Wormtail was there and . . . Voldemort . . . he told him to kill the spare. . . ."

Sirius's grip tightened on Harry's shoulder and opened his mouth. Regulus half-expected Sirius to claim there was no point in making him tell the tale tonight again, but Dumbledore gave him a pointed look and he remained silent.

Harry told them haltingly of a creature of sorts thrown into a cauldron, followed by the bones of Tom Riddle— apparently Voldemort's father— and Peter Pettigrew's own hand. The last detail made Regulus twitch a little and rub the Mark on his own arm. It never ceased to amaze him what Voldemort could convince his followers to do.

When Harry mentioned the Pettigrew had dug his knife into Harry's arm as well, Sirius swore and tightened his grip again. Regulus reached over and yanked his brother backwards, forcing him to loosen his grip, all the while feeling like swearing himself. He recognized the spell now from an ancient tomb on Dark Magic somewhere in their parents' library, and the whole thing made a little bit of sense now. "_Mala ars dicorum_," he mumbled.

"What?" Sirius asked.

"The words of evil art," Dumbledore translated. He was on his feet and had walked back around his desk, an odd and urgent look on his face. "The phrase has been used to describe similar rituals, and it is apt for this one." He shook his head. "Harry, may I see your arm?"

Harry extended it, revealing the jagged cut in his robes and equally uneven cut on his arm— Pettigrew's hand must have been trembling. "He said my blood would make him stronger than if he used someone else's. he said the protection my— my mother left in me— he'd have it too. And he was right— he could touch my without hurting himself, he touched my face."

Dumbledore's face took on a tremendously puzzling cast for a moment, as if he was looking into an answer he alone could see, but a moment afterwards that was all gone. He retreated behind his desk once again and sat back down. "Very well. Voldemort has overcome that particular barrier. Harry, continue, please."

Harry nodded hesitantly and did so. He described how Voldemort had risen alive from the cauldron and called his followers through the Mark on Pettigrew's arm— Regulus had rubbed his arm compulsively again at this detail before he realized what he was doing and shoved his hands hastily into his jacket pockets— and how the Death Eaters had gathered in a circle around him.

"Voldemort said he was disappointed in them," Harry continued, "since most of them had just gone back to their normal lives after he'd fallen, and that it would take thirteen years of service before he would forgive them for it. He told them that his truly loyal servant— Crouch, I guess— was at Hogwarts. He mentioned a few that were in Azkaban and a few that hadn't come back at all . . . who he planned to kill. . . ."

Sirius finally tore his eyes away from Harry for a moment to glance back at his brother, as worried about Regulus as he was about his godson.

Regulus shrugged— there was no reassurance he could give, since Pettigrew would undoubtably have told Voldemort he was still alive. Still, it was a little comforting, somehow, to know that his brother could tell how much danger he was in, and cared enough to want some reassurance or plan of action.

Harry continued, describing the duel Voldemort had had him fight— the mock duel, really, since the Dark Lord could not have thought a fourteen-year-old boy was any threat. Regulus's fists curled in his pockets as he listened, wondering how he'd put up with the man's behavior for even the comparatively short time he had. Even Bella would rather just kill him than taunt him endlessly like a cat playing with a mouse.

"And I cast_ Explliarmus _and he cast _Avada Kedavra _at the same time and the wands connected, and. . . ." Harry swallowed, but it didn't seem as if he could bring himself to continue.

A heavy silence fell on the four in the office, until Sirius finally broke it. "The wands connected?" he asked, turning to Dumbledore. "Why?"

Dumbledore looked a little surprised himself, but after a moment he muttered, "_Priori Incantatem_." He looked over at Harry, and the two stared at each other for a moment.

Sirius broke the resumed silence once again. "The reverse spell effect?"

"Exactly. Harry and Voldemort's wand share a tail-feather core from the same phoenix. _This_ phoenix, in fact," Dumbledore responded, nodding to Fawks.

"My wand's core came from Fawks?" Harry asked.

"Indeed. Mr. Ollivander wrote to tell me that you had bought the other wand with Fawks's feather when you left his shop four years ago."

"So what happens when two such wands duel?" Sirius continued doggedly, clearly determined to get an answer.

"They will not work properly against each other," Dumbledore replied. "If, however, the owners of the wands force them to do battle, a very rare effect will occur. One of the wands will force the other to regurgitate the spells it has preformed— in the reverse. The most recent first, and so on."

He glanced over at Harry, who nodded.

"Which means," Dumbledore continued, "that some form of Cedric must have reappeared."

Regulus, who had spent more of his teenage years buried in a book on magical theory than he liked to admit rather than out in the world gaining the experience with people that would have enabled him to get out of the situation Bella had dragged him into at seventeen, whistled under his breath and reached up to adjust his glasses. "Of course," he muttered. "But still. . . ."

Sirius, however, had not had Regulus's exposure to magical theory. "Diggory came back to life?" he demanded, clearly confused.

Dumbledore shook his head heavily. "No spell can reawaken the dead. All that would have happened was a sort of reverse echo. A shadow of the living Cedric would have emerged from the wand. . . . Am I correct, Harry?"

Harry nodded. "He spoke to me . . . the ghost Cedric, whatever he was, spoke to me. . . ."

"An echo," Dumbledore repeated, "that would have retained Cedric's form and personality. And I would assume other such echoes appeared?"

Harry nodded. "An old man . . . Bertha Jorkins . . . and . . . and. . . ."

"Your parents?" Dumbledore asked.

As Harry nodded again, Regulus watched the muscles flex on Sirius's right hand as his grip tightened on the kid's shoulder again.

"The last murders the wand performed, in reverse order. Very well, Harry, these echoes, these shadows . . . what did they do?"

Harry explained how his father had explained what to do and how Cedric has asked him to return his body to his parents before fading off, clearly unable to continue. Sirius's breathing had gotten heavier as Harry tried to finish, and he took his— undoubtably painful— grip off of Harry's shoulder to bury his head in his hands. As Harry faded off, Regulus lay an awkward hand on his brother's shoulder.

Fawks drifted to the floor and began to cry, patching up the wound on Harry's leg. Had it not been for Sirius's heavy breathing, Regulus might have sworn that he could hear the sound of the phoenix's teardrops.

"I will say this once again, Harry," Dumbledore said as Fawks flew onto his perch again, "you have shown courage beyond anything I could have expected of you tonight, equal to adult wizards who fought Voldemort at the height of his powers. You have shouldered the burden of an adult wizard and found yourself equal to it— and you have now given us more than we had a right to expect. And now you will accompany me to the hospital wing. I don't want you returning to your dormitory tonight. . . . I assume you two would like to stay with him?"

Sirius lifted his face from his hands, a little surprised, and nodded. Both he and Regulus transformed into canines and followed the two down the flight of steps and up another to the hospital wing. Several members of the Weasley family, Hermione Granger, and Madame Pomfrey were waiting for them.

"Oh, Harry!" Mrs. Weasley exclaimed, striding forward.

Dumbledore held up a hand to stop her. "Molly, Harry has been through a terrible ordeal tonight, and he has just had to relive it for me. If he would like you all to stay with him, you may do so. But I do not want you questioning him, and certainly not this evening."

Mrs. Weasley, who was already pale, looked even a little more frightened and nodded, rounding on the other. "Do you hear? He needs quiet!"

Madame Pomfrey, on the other hand, was looking distastefully at Sirius and Regulus. "Headmaster, may I ask what. . . ?"

"The dogs will be remaining with Harry for awhile," Dumbledore explained. "I assure you they are very well trained. Harry— I will wait until you get into bed."

There was near silence until Harry had gotten into a bed and been given a potion to help him sleep, after which Dumbledore left to speak with Fudge. It was only after a slightly more comfortable silence had settled in that it occurred to Regulus that Harry had only drank half the purple liquid in the bottle.

**

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Author's Note:** There are definitely two more chapters to 1994, just so you all know how much longer it's going to last --- there's no way I can wrap this all up in one. Anyway, onto the reviews. Jackline: I assure you I have thought about most of 1995 in detail, and I'm itching to get started on it, but I won't let myself until I actually finish this one (I'm depending on winter break, here). Mizz Moony Luver: ((hugs)) I missed you. StarGirl5000: I appreciate that I haven't gone as deep into this as I will, but Reggie is one of those people who keeps his head pretty much at all times. He's a little on the passive side and he grew up with Bella, so equates panic with getting even deeper into trouble, which are two pretty good reasons he didn't do anything--- he didn't have all the information. Still, thanks very much for giving me a review that made me pause and think, and thank you very much to everyone else who dropped me a line! Cheers! --- Loki 


	16. Tasks Assigned

Harry wasn't the only one who fell asleep— both Ron and Regulus dozed a little, too, Ron leaning against his older brother and Regulus with his tail flipped over his nose. Sirius didn't quite understand how Regulus could sleep, but after about an hour even he gave up on his pacing and lay down with his head on his paws, still very much awake.

No sooner had he done so than the shouting started. Sirius vaguely recognized both voices— Minerva McGonagall's and Cornelius Fudge's. They were approaching, getting louder and clearer until Sirius was straining his pointed ears, sure that any minute he'd be able to hear the words. Ron jerked out of his doze as they came closer; Regulus remained curled in his ball, but his left ear pricked up, so Sirius knew he was paying attention, and Mrs. Weasley got to her feet. "They'll wake him up if they keep at it," she hissed.

"The incident is certainly regrettable, but all the same, Minerva—"

"You should never have brought it inside the castle! When Professor Dumbledore finds out—"

Before McGonagall could finish her sentence, the door burst open and Cornelius Fudge came storming in. He moved like a fury and his face was set in a grim line, but Sirius could _smell_ the shock and fear. McGonagall strode in after him, equally furious and visibly shaken. Snape trailed behind the both of him, looking as vindictive as ever but perhaps a bit paler than usual.

"Where's Dumbledore?" Fudge demanded.

Mrs. Weasley drew herself up angrily, and to Sirius it looked as though she would be a match for the deputy headmistress in her indignance. "He's not here. This is a hospital wing, Minister, don't you think you'd be better to—"

But before she could work herself into a tirade, Dumbledore opened the door and swept in. "What has happened?" he asked, looking from one intruder to the other. "Why are you disturbing these people? Minerva, I'm surprised at you— I asked you to stand guard over Barty Crouch—"

"There's no need to anymore!" Professor McGonagall cried, nearly hysterical. "The minister has seen to that!"

Snape's eyes flicked over to her a little nervously, and Sirius remembered some of the teenager in that— Snape had never liked scenes unless they were the reason he was being ignored. He turned to Dumbledore and spoke tersely to him, ignoring events in the rest of the room. "When we told Mr. Fudge that we had caught the Death Eater responsible fir tonight's events, he seemed to feel his personal safety was in question. He insisted on summoning a dementor to accompany him into the castle. He brought it up to the office where Barty Crouch—"

"I told him you would not approve, Headmaster!" Professor McGonagall cried, still furious. "I told him you would never allow dementors to set foot inside the castle, but—"

"My dear woman!" Fudge interrupted angirly. "As Minister of Magic, it is my right to decide whether or not to bring protection along when I interview a possibly dangerous—"

"When that— that _thing_ entered the room Crouch was in," McGonagall continued, absolutely bent on having her say in the explanation, "it swooped down on him, and— and—"

Sirius felt his hackles rising involuntarily and with horror rather than anger. She'd said enough to know it had administered the Dementor's Kiss. Foul though Crouch was . . . it had almost happened to him, and it was a terrible way to go. Death was sufficient.

"Well, assuredly he is no loss!" Fudge exclaimed, clearly trying to cover his tracks. "From what I understand, he was responsible for several deaths!"

"Yes, but now he can no longer give testimony," Dumbledore explained quietly. "He cannot give evidence as to why he killed these people."

"Well, that's no puzzle, really, is it?" Fudge asked. "He was clearly a raving lunatic! From what Minerva and Severus had told me, he seems to believe he was following You-Know-Who's instructions."

"He _was_ following Lord Voldemort's instructions, Cornelius," Dumbledore explained. "These deaths were a mere by-product of a plan to restore Lord Voldemort to power once again. That plan has succeeded. Lord Voldemort rose again tonight."

It was as if someone had hit Fudge with a sledgehammer, leaving him dazed and gibbering. In any other circumstance, Sirius might have been amused, but now he was merely annoyed.

"You-Know-Who . . . returned?" Fudge asked. "Preposterous. Come now, Dumbledore. . . ."

"As Severus and Minerva have no doubt informed you, we heard Barty Crouch confess," Dumbledore informed him. There wasn't even an edge to his voice. His patience astounded Sirius— this was the point at which e would have hexed Fudge into next Wednesday and dealt with him later. "Under the influence of Veritaserum, he told us how he was smuggled out of Azkaban, and how Voldemort, learning of his continued existence from Bertha Jorkins— went to free him from his father. The plan worked, I tell you. Crouch has helped Voldemort to return."

Fudge stared at him for a moment as though dumbstruck. Then his face broke into a slight, derisive smile. "Come now, Dumbledore. . . you— you can't seriously believe that. See here . . . Crouch might have certainly _believed_ he was acting on You-Know-Who's orders— but to take the word of a lunatic like that. . . ."

Sirius heard Regulus make a sound somewhere between a derisive snort and a growl. Regulus's head was up now, staring at Fudge, and he was on his feet.

"When Harry touched the Triwizard Cup, he was transported straight to Voldemort," Dumbledore answered. "He witnessed Lord Voldemort's rebirth. I will explain it all to you, if you will step into my office." He glanced over at Harry, who was sitting up in bed, watching the drama unfold, "I'm afraid I cannot permit you to question Harry tonight."

Fudge looked mildly amused. "You are . . . er . . . prepared to take Harry's word on this, are you, Dumbledore?"

Sirius snarled, seriously considering the option of taking a bite out of the Minister. He had half expected Regulus to join him, but when he glanced beside him, the fox was nowhere to be found.

"Of course I believe Harry," Dumbledore answered simply, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "I witnessed Crouch's confession, and heard Harry's account of what happened after he touched the Triwizard Cup. The two stories make sense, and they explain everything that has happened since Bertha Jorkin's disappeared last summer."

Fudge's eyes flicked over to Harry. "You're willing to believe that You-Know-Who has returned on the word of a lunatic murderer, and a boy who, well. . . ."

His eyes lingered on Harry for another long moment.

"You've been reading Rita Skeeter, Mr. Fudge," Harry said quietly.

Fudge stared at him for a moment in surprise and a little embarrassment, before his face hardened obstinately. "So what if I have? If I have discovered that you've been keeping certain facts about the boy very quiet? A Parselmouth, eh? And having funny turns all over the place—"

"I assume you are referring to the pains Harry has been experiencing in his scar?" Dumbledore asked, quite complacently.

"So you admit that he's been having these pains?" Fudge demanded, as though certain he'd backed Dumbledore into a corner. "Headaches? Nightmares? Possibly hallucinations?"

Dumbledore sighed. "Listen to me, Cornelius— Harry is as sane as you or I. The scar on his forehead has not addled his brains. I believe it hurts him whenever Lord Voldemort is close by, or feeling particularly murderous."

He stepped closer, and Fudge took another step backwards, but he still looked unconvinced. "I've never heard of a curse scar acting as an alarm bell before—"

"Look I saw Voldemort return!" Harry exclaimed, trying to get up. Molly Weasley, however, seized him and held him back in bed. "I saw the Death Eaters! I can give you their names—"

But every name Harry gave— and Sirius would have bet his life, even if he hadn't known Harry was there, that they were all accurate— Fudge dismissed.

Dumbledore interrupted this useless battle with instructions for Fudge, things he ought to do now that Voldemort had returned— putting more than dementors on guard in Azkaban, or trying to make allies of the giants. Fudge dismissed these with even more fervor than he had Harry's list of names. While Sirius kept his mouth shut, he could feel the hair on the back of his neck standing on end. He'd known Fudge was a bungler, but he hadn't realized he was this much of an _idiot_.

Finally, as though trying to keep the peace, Dumbledore finally told Fudge that each should act as they saw fit. To Sirius's admiration, there was still no trace of impatience in his voice, but Fudge drew back as if he'd been threatened.

"Now, see here, Dumbledore," he answered, balling his fists in anger, "I've given you pretty free reign to run this school— not many ministers would let you hire werewolves and half-giants, or decide what to teach without reference to the Ministry. But if you're going to work against me—"

"The only person I intend to work against," Dumbledore answered quietly, "is Lord Voldemort. If you are also against him, Cornelius, then we remain, as always, on the same side."

Fudge stared at him for a moment, and for the first time the fear showed through the fury. "He can't be back, Dumbledore, he just can't be. . . ."

At this point, Snape lost his patience with the minister, drew up his left sleeve, and shoved the Dark Mark into Fudge's face. Knowing the way Regulus had reacted to its return, Sirius wasn't surprised that the denial was what finally made Snape snap, and convinced him to explain exactly what the thing meant in that harsh voice.

Fudge recoiled from the Potions Master with a look of horror intermingled with anger. "I don't know what you and your staff are playing at, Dumbledore, but I have heard enough. I will be in touch with you tomorrow to discuss the running of this school." And with that, he strode out the door.

Sirius was willing to bet that he and possibly Dumbledore were the only ones to see the little fox scurry past Fudge just before he slammed the door. Regulus skidded to a stop and sat down beside his brother, and Sirius could feel him shaking slightly beside him— whether Regulus was simply panting hard from the sprint or if whatever he'd left the room to take a look at had actually frightened him, Sirius didn't know.

Dumbledore's eyes lingered on the slammed door for a moment before he shook his head and turned back to the group gathered about the hospital wing. "There is still work to be done," he announced. "Molly . . . am I right in thinking I can count on you and Arthur?"

She nodded. "Of course. We know what Fudge is. It's only his love for Muggles that has held Arthur back all these years. Fudge thinks he lacks proper wizarding pride."

"Then I need to send a message to Arthur," Dumbledore murmured. "All those that can be persuaded of the truth should be notified immediately, and Arthur is well-placed to speak to those in the Ministry not as short-sighted as Cornelius."

The eldest Weasley son— Sirius tried and failed to remember if he knew the boy's name— stood up. "I'll go to Dad," he announced. "I'll go right now."

Excellent," Dumbledore answered, nodding. "Tell him what happened, and that I will be in direct contact with him as soon as possible. He will need to be discreet, however. If Fudge thinks I am interfering at the Ministry. . . ."

"Leave it to me," the boy answered. He grasped Harry's shoulder briefly, kissed his mother on the cheek, grabbed his cloak and swept out the door after Fudge.

Dumbledore nodded sedately again. "Minerva," he added to McGonagall, "I want to see Hagrid in my office as soon as possible. And if she will agree to come also— Madame Maxime."

Professor McGonagall nodded silently and left.

Dumbledore then turned to Madame Pomfrey. "Poppy, if you would be so kind as to go down to Professor Moody's office, where you should find a house-elf called Winky in considerable distress? Do what you can for her, then take her to the kitchens, where I think Dobby will look after her for us."

Startled, the nurse nodded. "Very— very well," she answered, and left.

Dumbledore made sure that the door was closed and turned back to the remaining group. Sirius realized with a start that, with the exception of Snape and Molly Weasley, it had been narrowed down to the people who knew what he was. "Now, it is time for a few of our number to recognize each other for what they are. Sirius, if you and your brother would resume your usual forms."

Sirius glanced up at him, realizing that he'd half-consciously expected this, and both he and Regulus shot up into human form.

Molly Weasley leapt back from Harry's bed with a muffled shriek. "Sirius Black!" she shouted, pointing at him.

"Mum, shut up! It's all right!" Ron shouted, reaching out to steady her before she fell over.

Snape had done neither, although he had stiffened visibly, and stared at Sirius and Regulus alike with shock and fury. "Him!" he exclaimed, turning back to Dumbledore. "What is he doing here?"

Sirius scowled back at Snape and raised an eyebrow.

"He is here at my invitation," Dumbledore answered quietly. "As are you, Severus. I hold that it is time for you to lay aside our differences and trust each other."

Snape's beady black gaze turned on Sirius again, eyeing him with the same look he might give a rack— the standby look when they'd been in school. Sirius matched him glare for glare, and out of the corner of his eye he saw Regulus bury his head in is hands and mutter something that began with the word "idiots."

Dumbledore's patience seemed to be wearing thin at long last. "I will settle, in the short term, for a lack of open hostility, then," he announced. "You will shake hands. You are on the same side, now, and unless the few of us who know the truth stand united, there is no hope for any of us."

Sirius recognized the tone as that of an order rather than a suggestion and grudgingly extended a hand. Snape apparently didn't know whether to direct his rancor at Dumbledore or him, and glowered menacingly at the floor as he took it. Regulus, still with his face buried exasperatedly in his hands, had just enough time to mutter some other slightly degrading comment before both broke away and wiped their hands on their shirts.

Dumbledore stepped between them, aware that the lack of argument would be short lived if he didn't. "Now, I have work for the both of you," he announced briskly. "Fudge's attitude, while not unexpected, changes everything. Sirius, Regulus, I need you to set off at once. You are to alert Remus Lupin, Mundungus Fletcher, Arabella Figg— the old crowd. Lie low at Remus's for awhile— I will contact you there."

"But—" Harry started.

Sirius turned to him, smiling slightly. "We'll see each other again very soon, Harry," he promised the boy. But I must do what I can. You understand, don't you?"

"Yeah. . . ." Harry answered, although he still sounded reluctant. "Yeah, of course I do."

Sirius squeezed his hand and Regulus nodded to him before the two transformed yet again. Sirius opened the hospital wing door with a paw and both of them disappeared out of it.

**

* * *

Author's Note:** All right, obviously Dumbledore and Fudge's conversation needs to be disclaimed--- there just wasn't much I could do with it. Everything outside the dialogue tags is, as always, mine, of course. And I actually have the last chapter written! Hopefully I will revise it and start on 1995 soon. Also thanks to some confusion, I'm going back and changing every refeence to the "canines" in the last chapter to the dog and fox; the "dogs" is there because both Madame Pomfrey and McGonagall mistook Regulus for one. Thanks for pointing it out; I'm sorry about the confusion! And onto reviews: xtotallyatpeacex: Sirius told Dumbledore that he and Regulus were animaguses at the end of 1993; I believe in chapter 16. Mizz Mooney Luver: Yeah, my reaction would've been in sync with Molly's, too. Until next (and final) chapter,Cheers! --- Loki 


	17. Resurrecting the Order

"Are you all right, Reggie?" Sirius asked, reaching out to grab his brother's shoulder.

"Sirius, we just got off of that damn hippogriff, and you know I'm not good with heights. Of course I don't look all right," Regulus answered, feigning exasperation to cover the white lie. His hand still drifted up to his glasses. "Add that to the fact that you woke me up about this time yesterday morning and neither of us have slept since. . . ."

Sirius grabbed his wrist and dragged it back down. "You've been a bit quiet."

"You expect me to be fluent several hundred feet in the air?"

"In profanity, yes." Sirius crossed his arms over his chest and glared at his brother.

Regulus sighed. The two were in a small copse of trees outside of Lincolnshire, not that far from where Remus Lupin was currently living. It was an ideal place to leave Buckbeak for the next fifteen minutes and, unfortunately, an ideal place to hold this conversation. "Really, Sirius. . . ."

The elder brother shook his head and, a moment later, his eyes widened as he realized what caused this. "What happened when you disappeared?" he demanded.

"When I disappeared?"

"Out of the hospital wing," Sirius persisted, not about to be deterred by feigned puzzlement. "When you came back, you were shaking. I thought at the time it was just you panting, but now I'm pretty sure it was more."

"That." Regulus sighed and reached up to his glasses once again. Sirius watched him fiddle with the lens, but this time he didn't drag it back down. "I knew there wasn't going to be a guard on Crouch and just wanted to see if he was one of the ones I might recognize."

Sirius bit his lip. "Was he?"

"Sort of. He used to tag along behind Rabastan. I guess, in a way, he was Rabastan's as assuredly as I was Bella's; he just . . . stayed that way."

Sirius shook his head, but before he could say something along the lines of "idiot," Regulus continued.

"And then of course I didn't see him until after he's been kissed by a dementor, and. . . ." He faded off, shuddering.

Sirius reached out, then let his hand drop. "I know _that's_ awful."

"Blonde little kid . . . how old . . . thirty-two? Looked like Cissy's boy might, some years down the road," Regulus muttered. "Odd, how that happens . . . the Rosier's are pretty closely tied in with the Crouch's though, aren't they, and that's where Cissy got her looks from. But there was _nothing_ _there_, and yet he was still breathing. . . ." He shuddered yet again. "And that's not even the worst bit."

Sirius raised an eyebrow. "Than what was that, then?"

"It could have been either of us," Regulus murmured. "Me if I'd stuck with Bella . . . if I'd let her turn me into what he let the Lestranges turn him into. You . . . well, anytime last year, really. All it would have taken was one more careless move . . . or Dumbledore not believing you when you told him your story, and you'd be gone. . . ."

Sirius shook his head. "Reggie. . . ."

Regulus shuddered but didn't reply.

"Reggie," Sirius repeated with a little more urgency. "It didn't happen."

"It could have."

"But it didn't. You were bright enough to change your mind and had the guts to tell Bella to stuff it, and Dumbledore must have known somewhere that I'd never do that to Lily and James. It didn't happen."

"Still. . . ." Regulus faded off and shuddered again.

"It didn't happen," Sirius repeated. "That's what's important. Neither of us is Crouch, even if we could have been. We're us."

Regulus shook his head. "Damn," he mumbled.

"Really, if we spent much time over what-could-have-beens, we'd be worse off than we are," Sirius muttered. He put a hand on Regulus's shoulder and squeezed a little. "What's important's what actually happened, who we actually are. Now let's get to Remus's."

* * *

Remus Lupin had been hopefully skimming the "Help Wanted" ads of several Muggle publications over a cup of coffee when the doorbell rang. Ever the prudent one, he slid the _Daily Prophet_— currently bearing a glossy and angrily gesturing photograph of Fudge and a headline about the "senility" of Albus Dumbledore, whose days at Hogwarts could be numbered— between two of the sofa cushions, and turned the two moving photographs onto the wall— one of the Marauders and Lily in their seventh year of school and another of his parents— so that their brightly painted backs showed before he went to answer the door.

He was greeted by a short, skinny, and bespectacled man holding back a monstrously large black dog. The animal immediately wrenched out of the man's grip and bounded inside, plumed tail waving. The man watched it go with an irritated sigh, fiddled with his glasses for a moment, and looked up at Remus. "Hullo, Lupin."

"Regulus," Remus greeted him, nodding. "Why are you still in this country?"

"Well, 'still' is a bit of a misnomer," Regulus answered with a shrug. "I'm sure you get the papers, so you read in the _Daily Prophet_ that Harry was entered in the Triwizard Tournament, right?"

"Accompanied by a miniature biography that made me doubt the articles reliability, yes."

"Well, do you honestly think Sirius would have remained the good, quiet house pet in France while his godson was over here and in that kind of danger?"

"No, I s'pose not," Remus replied. He stepped back from the door so Regulus could come in, closed it, and turned back in the direction of his living room. "Sirius?" he called. "What are you into now?"

"How old is this picture of your parents?" Sirius called back in turn.

"Just under thirty years, I think. Long before I knew you. So yes, that really _is_ my dad under all that hair," Remus replied. He glanced at Regulus, who was looking bemused. "My father was going bald by the time your brother met him," he explained. Raising his voice slightly again, he added, "If the two of you wouldn't mind coming into the kitchen, I'll make breakfast and you can explain what you're doing here."

Without waiting for Sirius to furnish an answer, Remus ambled towards the kitchen, Regulus at his heels. Sirius was already seated at the kitchen table by the time they came in and Remus turned to coffee maker back on. "So . . . the Triwizard Tournament is over, Harry won, Cedric Diggory died in a tragic accident, and the paper was being suddenly very discreet. What actually happened? I assume that's what you came to talk to me about."

Sirius and Regulus exchanged an odd look that probably spoke volumes to each other about whatever had happened but didn't tell Remus a thing. He only knew that it was serious and much bigger than Harry. It had to be, to scare the both of them this badly.

Still, he forced himself not to simply stare at them while they formulated an answer and to go about the normal task of making breakfast. He went to the pantry to see what he could serve. "Well . . . I've got cornflakes," he announced after a moment.

"The guests aren't going to be picky," Sirius replied.

"And as for what brought us here," Regulus added softly as Remus brought the cereal box to the table, "well . . . that would be this." He pulled his sleeve up to his elbow, revealing an ugly red scar on his forearm.

Remus leaned over to see exactly what it was. "The Dark Mark?" he asked.

Regulus nodded. "He branded it into all of us, to call us when it burned black. It faded after he disappeared. Now that he's back, so is it."

Remus took a moment or two to reassess the situation now that Voldemort had returned and looked up into Regulus's gray eyes. The only thing he could make out on his face was a little pain.

It was amazing, really, he reflected, how alike the two Blacks really were. Sirius hid his vulnerability under a tough exterior it was nearly impossible to break through and always had. Regulus seemed timid and compliant at first, but somewhere under that were a pair of steel doors— Remus had seen that much when he'd confronted Peter last year. But behind the doors he was even easier to scare than Sirius.

"So it is far bigger than Harry," he mumbled.

"Much," Regulus agreed quietly.

Sirius absently batted the box of cornflakes, and both of the other two glanced over at him. He stared back, only slightly guilty. "What? I'm _hungry_."

Remus chuckled and went to the cupboard and fridge to get bowls and milk. Sirius filled two of the bowls, since Regulus turned the cornflakes down but readily took the coffee when it was offered to him, muttering something about caffeine and having really gone native in France when it came to sources for it.

"Well, to completely tell you what happened," Sirius started once everyone was sitting down and eating, "Harry and Diggory apparently got to the cup at the same time, and were transported to the graveyard, where Diggory was killed and Harry was used to help Voldemort rise again. Then Harry fought off the Death Eaters and got Diggory's body back to Hogwarts. The whole thing was planned from the beginning by Barty Crouch's son, who escaped Azkaban with his dad's help and had been impersonating Mad-Eye Moody the entire year."

"We'll fill in the details better later," Regulus mumbled.

"Anyway, Dumbledore told me to get together the old crowd and lie low here for a little while," Sirius added. "You're the first place we stopped. Buckbeak's round back and about five minutes into the woods."

"All right," Remus said slowly. "Have you told anyone else in the old crowd? Mundungus Fletcher? Dedalus Diggle? Arabella Figg?"

Regulus put down his coffee cup with a slight smile. "Well," he answered dryly, "we decided that a homicidal maniac and a dead man weren't going to carry much weight with the latter two, although there's still a chance that Fletcher would buy our story. You're in a better position to pass the information on."

"The werewolf sacked from Hogwarts for trying to eat his students?" Remus asked, his voice equally dry. "Because, really, if we're going to shove everyone into a category. . . ."

"You weren't sacked," Sirius growled.

"Only because I had the grace to resign before Dumbledore had to," Remus pointed out. "But otherwise, you have a point. I'll send owls out right after breakfast."

"Excellent," Sirius answered.

"Any idea what Dumbledore's going to do after resurrecting the Order?" Remus added curiously.

"Not a blessed clue," Regulus answered promptly.

"I don't even know that we have a base of Operations yet," Sirius added, shrugging. "Although, when we do, I will necessarily be stuck at it since the entirety of the wizarding world would like to have my head. . . . Perhaps I'll come up with one, as the last useful thing I do. . . ."

"_Sirius_. . . ." Regulus and Remus said in simultaneous warning.

"Hey, Reg?" Sirius asked, clearly not listening, "who owns Grimmauld now?"

"You, I believe," he answered, adjusting his glasses and picking his coffee back up. "Since they think I'm dead, you're the last adult male relative standing."

"Oh. Then I suppose we can use that. If Kreacher's still alive and is doing his job, it might even be clean."

Regulus grinned slightly over the coffee mug. "And if he'd dead or hasn't been, it will at least give you something to do."

"Housework," Sirius muttered, disgusted. "Wonderful. Just the sort of useful business I imagined doing in the wake of Voldemort's return."

Remus shook his head, watching the two of them. Even in the middle of an impromptu war meeting, Sirius hadn't entirely lost his spark of irreverence, and it seemed he still had someone to feed it, even though James was no longer around. His little brother could fill that much of the gap.

"Anyway," Sirius announced suddenly, waving his hand as if brushing that away, "we've all got to do something. So how much exactly are we supposed to _tell_ the old Order?"

Remus _accio_-ed paper and a quill, and, pushing away bowls or coffee cups, the three of them started drafting the next phase of the Order's resurrection.

**

* * *

Author's Note:** Okay, so we finally discover what Regulus saw and Sirius gets his chance to be wise (which I really think he deserves on occasion). Remus also appears once again, which is good because he has a major role to play in 1995. I _have_ actually started writing 1995, although with the hecticness of the holidays I cannot guarantee it will be up next week. I'll try. Speaking of them, Happy Holidays everyone!

Wow . . . it's been an interesting trip again, and I'm glad for everyone who joined me. Now, as always, there are people I must thank. First of all, to my beta **Pam (a.k.a Suishu Tomoe)**, who was very helpful in correcting the chapters I _did_ get to her on time. To **Mizz Mooney Luver**, who occasionally points out little things I might overlook and frequently makes me laugh; to **Jackline**, who keeps asking the right questions; **snape'smistress–in-law**, whose reviews checked my characterization in a couple of key places; to **Gwinna** and **xtotallyatpeacex**, who assured me I was on the right track; and to **Gabwr**, **imakeeper**, **gatermage**, and **scarlet dreamer** for dropping a line almost every chapter. Also, thanks to **SupportSeverusSnape**, **ave-adore**, **Bakuscrazedfangirl**, **Padfoot2446**, **anonymous**, **Lily Hermione Potter**, **Rice Stalagtite**, **firorenza**,** Isis Flamewing**, **LastOfTheSummerWine**, **MercuryBlue144**, **krenya-alenak**, **Starshinesoldier**, **Jill**, **babygyrl**, **CapriceAnn Hedican-Kocur**, **Ramzes**, **StarGirl5000**,** hi**, and **Hebi R.** for offering encouragement or criticism somewhere along the way. I've really appreciated every bit of it!

Until Double Trouble: 1995, Cheers! — Loki


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